


Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters

by st_aurafina



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s01e10 Number Crunch, Episode: s02e16 Relevance, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Guide Harold Finch, Guide Root, M/M, Sentinel John, Sentinel John Reese, Sentinel Sameen Shaw, Sentinel Senses, Sentinel Zoning, Sentinel/Guide, Sentinel/Guide Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 16:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 52,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11809599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: In 2001, Harold advised on a project called Cascade, not knowing he was a Guide himself. Years later, he and John, a Sentinel on the run from Cascade, must help Shaw, who has just lost her own Guide when the Project turned on her. Complicating matters is Root, searching for Harold's Machine and interfering with their rescue of Shaw.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my amazing betas: lilacsigil and musyc. You guys were awesome and got me from "I want to write POI Sentinel/Guide fic with soft face touching" to actually getting it posted. 
> 
> Title is from the Elton John song. ("Subway's no way for a good man to go down.")
> 
> Dubcon warning is for a small part of Chapters Four and Five. For content notes and explanation of warnings, see notes at the end of the fic.

**2001**

The mood of the government in the wake of the attacks reflected the desperation of the country: locked doors were opened for Northern Lights, and Nathan was given unprecedented access to build the machine that would save the world.

The agency didn't question who trawled their databases, as long as they saw results, so, between coding runs, Harold took the opportunity to run his fingers through the secrets of the world. 

There was nothing he couldn't access on his own, but the difference between sneaking in and having a key was the luxury of being able to browse. Harold drew inspiration for his Machine from sources as disparate as global epidemiology and quantum tunnelling paths, and the repeated patterns of the universe delighted him over and over. 

"What kind of network is that?" Nathan said, one morning. "Seems a bit organic for your tastes." He propped a tray of coffee and pastries on the table – far away from Harold's terminal, a lesson learned early in their friendship – and leant on the back of the chair. 

He enlarged the scan, to show Nathan the data flow threads of red and green, branching out from a central source, logic trees far more complex than any he had ever constructed. 

"I stumbled across it in the CIA database. I can see that it's the basis for an interactive heuristic, but I have no idea with what it's meant to interact, if anything at all. I'd love to know more but the metadata has been completely stripped." He turned in his seat and affected a come hither gaze. 

"Oh, please," said Nathan, flattered and annoyed in equal parts. "Have I ever been able to resist that face?" 

"Not yet, luckily for me," said Harold. He knew he was lucky, actually. Nathan's abilities to network far exceeded his own. Nathan would put on a charming face – and it really was charming – and coax details from his contacts at Langley. 

Nathan passed him a paper cup and a Danish. "I'll see what I can do." 

A few weeks later, Harold found a battered paper folder tucked under his keyboard. A note on the front said, "Told you it was organic. N."

The folder was labelled 'Project Cascade', and it was, indeed, biological. There were brain scans: MRI, PET, EEG, an entire alphabet of magnetic resonance and blood flow and electrical activity in human subjects. Super soldier programs were always being rumoured, but this was more concrete than anything Harold had come across before. There were definite similarities to his own work, at least in terms of the way that information flow was handled. 

An older, more cynical Harold facing this information might have asked pertinent questions about consent and the ethics of using soldiers as experimental subjects, not to mention the large number of post-mortem images. Harold in 2001 found the details fascinating and hugely relevant to his own project. 

He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, scribbling in the margin of a report when Nathan came across him later that day. A pile of neurology textbooks lay scattered within easy reach, and behind him on the wall shone a slide projection of a dissected brain. 

Nathan stood at the periphery of the chaos. "Well, this is awfully gothic," he said. "Tell me, if you're Doctor Frankenstein, does that make me Igor?" 

Harold laughed. "No electrodes just yet," he said. "I'm just interested in the information processing data they've captured." 

"Why?" Nathan sat down to face him, with a sea of papers between them. "Is it applicable?" 

"So very much," said Harold. "They've got these subjects, remarkable subjects with an incredible ability to absorb sensory data. It's like a biological model for what we're building, but the signal pathways are so complex, the human brain can't handle it. Nor can any existing computer network…" He broke off, staring over Nathan's shoulder, into the future. "There's nothing like it, not in programming as we know it." 

Nathan leaned back on his hands. "From what Alicia told me, Project Cascade isn't going all that well. Their subjects all end up in straitjackets." 

"Oh, I'm not surprised," said Harold, with all the empathy of an unchallenged mind. "I'd be shocked if neurotransmitters could manage what we're hoping to achieve with semiconductors and wires." He felt that calm peace that comes when a concept clicks into place. "Because a single human brain don't have enough processing power," he said, softly. He scrawled it down in his notes. "That's where we'll have an advantage. It's not like you can network brains." 

"You sound like you'd enjoy being able to do that," said Nathan. "I don't want to come in one morning to find you've drilled a hole in your skull so you can talk to that thing directly." 

Harold cast a fond glance at the blinking wall of servers. "I can't deny I'd love the opportunity to interact with it, watch it learn and grow as we build it. But that's not our brief, is it? If it were, I'd be trying to offload the data from the overloaded memory source. Find a way to clear the databanks, make room for the next data influx." He idly sketched circuitry in the margin of the paper he was reading: two people, one to capture the data, and one to process it. 

Nathan smiled at him. "It's been a while since I saw that expression," he said. "You want me to leave you to it? I was going to drag you out into the daylight for some food. Maybe a little civilised conversation." 

"No, I feel ready to be lured into the sunshine," said Harold. "I think this concept needs a little brainstorming, anyway." He pushed himself upright, and stepped out of the circle of papers. 

Nathan tucked his arm around Harold's shoulder and led him towards the door. "It's very reassuring that you need me for anything, these days." 

Harold laughed as he walked beside him. In these grey, desperate days, it was nice to feel a little hopeful again. 

 

**2013**

Their current mission was a terrorist threat in Berlin: the number was for Ahnaz Bekhti, and while Cole had managed to uncover plenty of online connections to radical groups, they hadn't been able to get eyes on the man. Shaw had resorted to trawling the streets around his last known address with all her senses open wide, hoping to stumble across something suspicious.

It wasn't the way she liked to work. Her abilities were best used focused like a laser, not cast wide like a net, but she was plenty capable of stepping up to a challenge. And as it happened, she'd picked up a familiar scent as she wandered. The trace was bitter and memorable for the little adrenaline burst it triggered in her. She reached for the sense of it, letting her senses drift outwards, and identified the sulphur-laced tang of gunpowder. A sharp left turn took her towards a cluster of apartment buildings where youths slouched about the entrance. She hovered there for a moment, gathering information that only she could detect, then headed back to the main street. 

Normally the sensory input of a high-density metropolis would have left her reeling – especially under the heightened adrenaline of a mission – but Cole's voice was in her ear, keeping it together for both of them. He was in the white van on the corner, close enough that Shaw could feel him in her head, too, in that distant, not-quite-bond that was Cascade's preferred mode of operation. When her head was so full of data that her thoughts were squirming, she made her way over to the parking lot. She brushed her fingers along the smooth white paint of the van, and he pulled the door open so she could sit inside. 

He shut the door, sat next to her with his long legs bent, and crooked his arm through hers, leaning their bodies together. To anyone watching, it was a companionable hug, but Shaw had never been the hugging type. It did provide cover, though, and the physical contact required for Cole to access what she'd detected out there on the street. Shaw rolled her shoulders and let him inside her mind. They were practiced at this by now, and the move was easy, familiar. 

In her head, Cole was a cool and orderly presence as he sorted and filtered the flood of data she had accumulated doing recon. 

"What's that chemical trace, there?" he said. He picked one scent thread from the melange of sweat/garbage/old leather/metal/coffee/piss that burned Shaw's throat. 

She leaned into him as she focused on it, and narrowed down a sweet smell of burnt vinyl and vinegar. That was one of the first things she'd had locked in her mental glossary of things that went bang. 

"That's Semtex," she said, and threw open the door. "Thanks for the lead, Cole; I'll follow it down." 

She picked up the ghost of the trail, no more than molecules hanging in the air, and followed it, weaving between pedestrians and past flashing neon and loud music that would normally throw her senses off. She still had that lasting contact with Cole to help her keep a grip on things. She didn't even flinch when a siren went screaming past. 

The scent she followed held an extra note, whisper-thin and rare, woven into the oily trace of Semtex. Her mental glossary threw out a mnemonic: old linen, embroidered with purple flowers. She stretched her senses and blocked out sound as best she could, still buoyed by Cole's buffers, but she couldn't immediately pull the name from the images. Things were starting to fuzz out now, and there was white noise at the edge of her attention span. 

"That doesn't feel good," said Cole, over the radio. "I think that's enough, Shaw. I'm calling you in." 

Shaw knew she was over-extended; she was two blocks away from the van, but she still picked up his voice physically as well as on the earpiece, a weird aural double vision. He had the bottle of suppressants in his hand; Shaw heard the glossy red tablets clatter against each other and the sound brought the sickly flavour of the sugar coating into her mouth. It was too strong for her to hide the swell of nausea from Cole. She hated the suppressants, and had since training. 

"I saw that – you shouldn't be able to hear me, not at this distance, not unless you're overloaded. You've given us a lot to work with, Shaw. Come in and let me do my job now."

The Guides were in charge of the suppressants, as if Shaw and the other Sentinels couldn't be trusted to take care of themselves. It was one of the things that irked Shaw about Project Cascade: they spent energy convincing everyone that it was all so scientific, while behind the scenes, they totally bought into the idea that Sentinels were these precious mystical beings that needed constant coddling. 

"Get out of my head, Cole." Shaw pushed hard on that mental connection, enough that she heard Cole hiss. This was an unofficial secret among Sentinels: some of them, even through the weak bond, could hurt Guides. Shaw had heard it in training camp, whispered in her ear in the women's barracks one night: if your Guide gives you bad orders, sometimes you can shove back and run. She didn't know the specific situation that had led to this discovery, but she could guess. 

"Oh, come on, Shaw," Cole said. "Don't do this." He sounded stuffed up suddenly; she probably gave him a nose-bleed. 

Shaw smirked to herself, and stopped at a coffee cart. The sharp and acrid smell of strong black coffee would give her a temporary reprieve, like pressing on an itching mosquito bite. She sipped the coffee, let it burn on the way down, and brushed past a cop. Picking up the scent trail led her towards an apartment lobby, where two men waited for an elevator. They reeked of gunpowder and that faint trace of Semtex, the two of them. 

She should have listened to Cole, because the way she walked, the look in her eyes, maybe the weight of her gun in the shopping bag, tipped Bekhti's men off. And that drew the cop, who Shaw had to knock out, which made a mess of everything. Shaw would have been pissed that Cole was right, except that now they had evidence that Ahnaz Bekhti and his men were working with explosives. 

Shaw threw open the door to the van, where Cole sat with Kleenex jammed up his nose. 

"We're on a clock, Cole. Bekhti's going to know we're coming, very soon." 

Cole didn't even bother to suggest a timeout for Shaw to settle her mind; they both understood what would happen if they didn't travel fast enough to secure the bomb Bekhti was building. He handed her a pack full of gear, and they headed for the roof of the apartment tower. 

"There's a weird component in the explosive mix," Shaw said as they jogged for the stairs. "I know it's bad but I can't put a name to it." 

They were on the fire escape now. "Work the memory," he said, a little breathless. "What sounds go with the sensation, what colours?" 

In training, Sentinels work hard to build associations, pack in as much cross-referencing as possible, so that the Guides could use these mnemonic prompts. Cole knew her mental architecture by now: he'd learned her glossary and used it well. 

On the roof of Bekhti's building, Shaw paced while Cole searched for the right air vent for his cameras. She should have been calm, up here away from the street and the oppressive presence of too many people, but the absence of a name for the dangerous component made her want to kick the wall until something gave. A toe or a brick, she didn't care. 

She felt Cole's concern reach for her, at a respectful distance because he was Cole and Cole was a professional. It still irked her, and she slapped him gently on the head.  
"I'm fine," she said. "Find the right apartment." The air was cleaner up here, comforting smells and sounds like clean laundry and bacon, the clatter of kids running off to catch buses. All the normal stuff of living, the sounds and smells of another world. 

"Okay, here we go," said Cole, and they both gathered around the tiny screen to see what horror Bekhti was building on his dining table. Shaw watched them lift a glass vial above the clutter of wire and Semtex. The tumble of sand-coloured crystals caught her eye, and the memory replayed like a movie. 

She was back at base, under that first training bond they all got with Hersh, and he was building her sense vocabulary. They were working in one of the sensory rooms, just a classroom, really, with sound-proofed walls. Hersh passed her glass vials one by one, from a foam-lined wooden box. They were all weirdly heavy, for the tiny amount of material they held. 

"Polonium 210," he said, first up, holding a vial with a clear, yellowish liquid. It sloshed back and forth behind the glass, and Shaw knew that if it got into the water supply, it would kill everyone on base. "Same as they used on Litvinenko." 

"Shit," said Shaw. She put her hands under the table. She didn't want to touch that, or any of the other vials, which, to her senses, hummed and buzzed in their wooden box. She was pretty sure she could hear the protons and electrons from the radioactive substances fizzing and flying like tiny angry bees.

Sighing, Hersh tamped down her awareness of the other vials, and swung her focus to the one in his hand. He held it out for her. "You want to be a sniffer dog, you'd better know what you're hunting," he said. "A fully operational Sentinel would have saved us a hell of a lot of time in 2006."

Shaw took it. There was a rubber seal over the top of the vial, and she gingerly peeled it back. She didn't breathe it in. She didn't have to; it was vivid, it lit up her mind. The sense trail of polonium was surprisingly bright, a clatter of breaking glass and citrus. 

"Weird," said Shaw. "I can see my mother's antique candy dish when I smashed it. She was so mad." 

She felt Hersh roll the memory, like silk between his fingers. "Lead crystal," he said. "Polonium decays to lead. She shouldn't have served food in that, you know." 

Shaw snapped the seal back on and took the next vial from the box. "Maybe heavy metals are how I got to be here with you, Hersh?" 

The next vial rattled in her hand, yellow-brown crystals. They reminded her of beach sand, so she expected sea-salt or saline, but instead she got something soft and floral. "Lavender," she said. "Smells like an old lady's handkerchief." 

She heard someone's fingers snap, close but not so close she had to act. 

"Come on home, Shaw," said Cole. Shaw took hold of that sound and pulled hard, until she felt her feet on the rough concrete of the roof. Cole had backed right off, careful not to touch her while she zoned out.

"That was some trip you just took," he said. "Does that mean you found the trace?" 

Shaw peered over Cole's shoulder, saw the men pass the vial between them with terrifying calm. She took a breath, calming herself, too. "That's caesium," she said. "Bekhti's making a dirty bomb." 

The mission went okay, considering how rattled they both were by the caesium. Cole got a little edgy like he always did when the stakes were high, but he pulled it all together and found Shaw her final shot. Then, when the terrorists were all down and the knockout gas had cleared, Shaw could pull off her mask, breathe air still sweet with fentanyl, and cut her bullets out of the body. She felt stretched thin as she worked, but she got the job done. When she walked out of the building hidden among the evacuating residents, she knew she'd gone way past her limits by the way her own footsteps hurt her ears more than the fire siren, and how the breezes moving down the road carried a thousand traces. This was the part of the mission she hated most: the come-down. She had her own way to deal with it, though it wasn't going to make Cole happy. 

"Where's the Semtex?" asked Cole, as he locked away the caesium in the van. He'd be dropping that off to the US embassy before they left Berlin. 

Shaw shrugged, thumbed the dial button on her phone, and waited for the explosion. They were distant enough for a normal person so Cole would be fine, and she'd still get what she needed out of it. When the bomb went off, it was like all of her nerves fired at once: she saw the sound in bright rainbows of light behind her eyelids, and felt the detonation against her skin like pillows. The shockwave rendered her beautifully, blissfully deaf, and all the other senses backed down in response. Better than booze, better than a hammer on a toenail, and forever better than those fucking suppressants.

She slumped against Cole. "Won't be needing those pills now, huh?" she said. She could see her face reflected in his lenses, and she giggled, because she looked so goofy.

She watched his lips shape the words, "Jesus, Shaw," but he put an arm around her anyway. She leaned into him; through her numbed senses, he smelled faintly of clean sweat and electronics, utterly reassuring. Shaw forgot sometimes that she didn't hate Cole, not like she hated the rest of the world. She probably shouldn't have given him that bloody nose.

At least Cole was the kind of decent that didn't bear a grudge. Shaw knew that things were okay between them, because on the way back to the hotel, he pulled into a drive-through and got her a cheeseburger. It was warm, and to her muddled senses, tasted of damp paper and nothing else, which was wonderful.

The numbness from the explosion wore off much faster than she anticipated, and by the time Cole pulled into the underground parking garage, Shaw had the shakes really bad. She'd over-extended herself again and again, and now she was a bag of nerves covered with tight, itchy skin. While they walked towards the elevator, tires screeched up the ramp, and she slammed Cole to the ground in response, covering his body with her own, weapon drawn and aimed. Pale faces in a sedan stared at them, shocked, as the car glided past out to the road. When Cole stood, his nose was dripping again. Shaw tipped his head forward and pinched the bridge until she heard it stop dripping. 

In his room, Cole had blankets warming on the towel rack to drape over her shoulders, chocolate bars to boost her blood sugar, and her noise-cancelling headphones. All out of arguments, Shaw sat cross-legged on the bed in the dim light and let the heat soak into her bones. Finally, when her ears stopped ringing, she let Cole pass her two of those little red tablets, washed them down with German beer and let the silence wash over her. 

All that time, Cole never once said, "I told you so." He just repacked his bloody nose and threw back a couple of Percocet before he got to work stowing their gear in separate bags. Shaw woke once in the night to find him curled around her body on the big bed, and she didn't push him away. 

She shouldn't let him do so much for her; if it got back to Control, they'd be split up. It was well known that Control didn't like their Guides and Sentinels to get too close, which was why Cole was the fourth partner Shaw had been assigned since she joined Cascade. It was built into the training: knowing how to break a bond, keeping the bond weak enough that both Sentinel and Guide can survive the breaking. They were the experts, Shaw thought, except that this run with Cole had been great and she wasn't ready to let it go. She and Cole had a rapport; they were one of Control's best teams, but that wouldn't slip under the radar for long. 

The other secret, the thing she couldn't tell anyone, not even Cole, was that they were a better team when she didn't take the suppressants. They had a stronger connection, made more intuitive leaps, she dealt with the sensory overload better and their results were stellar. The meds made the overload easier, yeah, but when she took them, it felt like Cole was so far away, even when he was in the same room. Right now, even with Cole pressed to her back, Shaw felt oddly lonely. She recognised that as wrong, because she didn't get lonely or frightened, never had, not until Cascade. The meds were supposed to help her process sensory data, and they did, but they also messed up her emotional state. She'd always had a good handle on that, right up until the doctors had strapped her to a chair and zapped her brain awake. 

She couldn't avoid the suppressants forever, though. There were blood tests and EEGs at the end of each mission, they'd show if she had abstained, but as much as she could, she avoided taking those little red pills. She had other means to quiet her mind (booze, pain, sex) and she only let Cole dose her up when things were at their most ragged. Sometimes it seemed like Cascade conspired to keep her on the damn things: insisting that Sentinels and Guides travel separately, for instance. There was no way Shaw could make it through the sensory barrage of a plane alone, not without either Cole or the pillow of chemical sedation. 

The thing Shaw could never puzzle out was why Cascade had developed the perfect weapons, then hobbled them this way. It made no sense.


	2. Chapter 2

**2006**

Harold checked in with Project Cascade from time to time, in the same way he kept a stealthy eye on many of the new projects initiated after 9/11. 

This time, he picked through medical records, frowning as Cascade scientists switched methodology again and again, with a rising number of fatalities. They moved from surgical to electrochemical activation of the sensory enhancement. They identified (from post-mortem studies of the surgical cohort) an anatomic difference in neural architecture in the successfully activated subjects. They followed that with a genetic tag and an assay to screen for it. This would save funds, a paper claimed triumphantly, since the activation procedure could be performed only on those with the genetic capacity to respond to it. A ninety percent activation rate was reached. A seventy percent mortality rate unfortunately followed. 

The deaths levelled out suddenly a few years back, though Harold would hardly call a fifty percent failure rate successful as such. Still, interested in what had brought such an abrupt change to the procedure, he looked at the protocol changes between generation one and two, and was shocked to see his own handwriting and a sketch of two human forms working together. It had been his concept of the two minds, one to gather and one to process, that had kicked off the latest phase of trials in Project Cascade. And now, the hypersensory subjects were assigned partners to assist in the processing of the data flooding through them. Another group of genetic isolates had been identified, apparently designed to operate in concert with the hypersensory group. The evolutionary psychologists were having a field day with that piece of information, as were, Harold read sourly, the political adherents of intelligent design. How could this not be the hand of God, that there were two groups so perfectly suited to collaboration? How could this not be God's will that this country had been gifted such a powerful weapon? It was this faction that brought in the mythological terms of Sentinel and Guide, and it was from them, also, that vastly increased funding came, and so the terminology stuck. It wasn't very scientific, Harold thought, but when has that ever stopped money from speaking and being heard? 

He cast an eye down the early screening tests for potential Guides, and paused. Mathematical proficiency, high IQ, introversion, highly ordered thinkers, these were all markers worthy of moving an individual onto the testing phase. Once there, the subjects were assessed physically: did they have the brain architecture that allowed a mental link to form between them and a Sentinel. Harold closed that file and sat back in his chair. He definitely met the initial criteria for being a Guide. What if he was one? Was that why he'd been able to so easily analyse the problems with Cascade at the very beginning, and suggest a solution? It would be easy enough to arrange for an MRI, to look for the physical evidence. Discomfited that his idle scratchings might have led to years of experimentation on human subjects, however voluntary their contribution might have been, Harold put the idea aside. He had his own important project to finish. 

Then there was Grace, and Harold lost himself in loving her. Being with her was like nothing he had ever experienced: he felt so close to her, that he'd be in the lab at IFT and know she was hungry or lonely or sad. He had never been in a relationship where it was easy to say the right thing, to allay someone's fears, to share their delight in beauty. 

Then, one weekend away from the city, where there were no distractions, he sat with his back to a fallen tree and watched Grace setting up her easel. It was afternoon, and she was hurrying to catch the magic hour of evening light. Harold could see she was worried, about wasting the opportunity, about being too focused on technicality to be truly creative, that she was doubting herself into inaction.

"Hey," he said, pushing himself upright with the easy movement of someone who has spent the night in a feather bed with someone he trusted and loved. He took her hands and raised them to his lips. "Everything will be all right." He wrapped her long fingers around his and kissed her knuckles. 

She let out a long sigh and rubbed her forehead, leaving a dark blue smear. "I'm overthinking everything," she said. "It's just that this weekend has been so perfect that I'm starting to believe it's not real. And once you doubt something it all falls apart. Maybe I've never really been an artist, you know? Maybe I'm a fake." 

"The last thing you are is a fake." Still holding her hands, Harold looked out over the vista she had chosen, and imagined how it must look to her, how she could break it down into colours and textures, and then project that vision onto the canvas. Grace's mind would be a little like her paintbox, he reasoned: intense and vivid, emotions expressed in shades and colours. He could see from her expression that she was ringing with the richness of colour they were bathed in. All she had to do was take that feeling and translate it into movement. 

Red and orange and purple, she wanted, in strata on a background of slate. He could feel the shape of the pastels between forefingers and thumb, with the contours carefully shaped to give lines or fields of colour as he chose. There was a feeling in his chest, a kind of urge to move, to seize those colours and smear them on the canvas.

Grace wriggled her fingers free, a distant expression on her face, and flipped her box of pastels open with a practiced gesture. She gathered a handful of pastels, and in a few movements, the canvas had a rough outline of the hills and the trunks of the biggest trees. 

Harold kissed her on the temple and left her to her work. He looked back over his shoulder, watched Grace layer red on sienna on plum, building foliage and shadow and slanting sunlight, and thought that he couldn't ever be happier than this. 

Later that evening in their cosy bed and breakfast with Grace asleep in his arms, Harold remembered that list of criteria: the interviews with Guides, how they described their bond, the feeling of processing data flow from their partnered Sentinels. He wondered if he had done something similar this afternoon, whether Grace had some hidden genetic potential, and him along with it. 

 

**2013**

John woke before his alarm, which was normal for him at the moment; the stockbroker two floors down was operating on international time, and the rattle of the water pipes was enough to wake him. He stretched under the covers, and slid an arm over Harold's belly on the off chance he was up for some morning fooling around.

Only barely awake, Harold made a soft, grumbling noise and batted at John's hand. "Bear! Los!" he said, and turned onto his side. 

Bear, lying innocently at the end of the bed, gave John a look of great betrayal, and John laughed softly. 

"Come on," he said to the dog. "Let's burn off some of this energy." 

Harold was gone when they got back from their morning run, but that was nothing to worry about; even in a relationship, Harold maintained solitary habits, and John knew he preferred to manage his creaky, tender morning soreness out of view. John didn't mind; he'd slept for hours pressed to Harold's back, nose to shoulder, his thoughts and senses wrapped in Harold's. Now he could face the world with quiet thoughts. 

The loft may have been empty when John pushed open the door, but his senses saw Harold's movements about the place as easily as if Harold had left a thin line of thread everywhere he stopped this morning: bathroom, chair where he carefully and habitually hung his clothes, bathroom again to hang up the towels, and the side table by the door to collect hat and keys. John followed Harold's footsteps back to the bathroom, holding tight to Bear's collar. Bear had found a dead squirrel at the park, and, perhaps in revenge for this morning's slander, diligently rolled in it. There's no way John wanted to smell that all day while people shot at him. 

The street was obligingly quiet this morning and John heard the gentle rapid sound of keys tapping before he set foot in the library, even before Bear cocked his ears in that direction. (Though to be fair, Bear was considerably distracted by the bag of pastries crooked in John's elbow.) 

"Mr Reese," Harold said, as if he hadn't pushed John down on the bed laughing last night, as if he hadn't pointedly removed the almost empty shampoo bottle John had been eking out and added it to the shopping list in neat capitals beneath John's left-handed scrawl. Harold's ability to compartmentalise was astonishing, John thought, and John had killed people for a living. 

He put the paper cup of tea down beside Harold's wrist, brushed his knuckles with one finger in greeting. "New numbers, Finch?" 

"Two." Harold had their faces up on the glass board already. "Michael Cole and Sameen Shaw. Two people with oddly muddy backgrounds; I suspect they habitually use constructed identities, because there are significant gaps in online activity, especially on the part of Ms Shaw." 

John couldn't tell much about either of them from headshots: Cole's expression was fairly open, his shoulders a little stooped. Shaw looked straight down the lens with a smile that was more like bared teeth. Something about that smile brought John's hackles up. He took a mouthful of coffee still too hot to drink, and let it burn all the way down. It didn't dissipate the defensive prickle at the back of his neck. If he were Bear, his lips would have pulled back over his teeth. 

"Mr Reese?" Harold's chair squeaked on the wooden floor as he stood, moving beside John in two uneven steps. "John. Are you all right? I can feel you bristling from here." 

He reached for John, and at John's nod, put a hand to John's nape, his fingers cool and soft as they stroked gently over the hair there. At the same time, John felt Harold's mind in his, a string of wind chimes that sounded with calm, precise tones as he made a methodical path through John's senses, checking and settling. Respectful, caring and competent: it had never been like this with Mark. 

John took a deep breath and let his shoulders fall. "I'm fine. Don't know what set me off, but it's settling now." He tilted his head to trap Harold's fingers against his skin for a moment to transform that coolness to warmth, then he stepped towards the computers. "Get me a location. I want to see them. Get a feel for what we're dealing with." 

After tinkering with the TSA's facial recognition, Harold pulled a seating allocation for Shaw travelling Berlin to New York under an assumed name and passport. Harold used that to find Cole, who left on a separate flight from Berlin this morning, also with an excellent false identity. 

"These are professionally done," said Harold, as he dissected out the details. "I'm not sure that I would have picked them up, had we not received numbers for them under their birth names." 

The details were adding up for John, and when he picked up Cole's trail at La Guardia, he found the man's phone unjackable. He had Harold intervene remotely to slow transactions at the car rental counter, which gave him a chance to plant a camera in the plain white van Cole hired. Then it was just a matter of tailing Cole into the city and listening to his conversation with Shaw. After a few moments, John tapped his earpiece. 

"Finch, they're operatives. Not sure what agency just yet, but Shaw's definitely ex-military. Cole's a technician. They're planning an execution; Shaw picked up orders last night." 

Over the line, he could hear the steady tap-tap-tap of keys. "That would explain the lack of personal data," said Harold. "And the exemplary paperwork on their passports." He paused and in the quiet, John could hear Bear gnawing happily at his chew toy. "Could this explain your reaction to Ms Shaw's photograph? An assessment of her potential danger?" 

"I won't know until I see her, Finch." To be honest, despite Harold's help, John still had unease about Shaw. Knowing that she was possibly a trained killer was going to make it difficult to work around her, even if she did need help.

He parked his car and made a pass on foot by Cole's hired van. Inside, Cole was talking very softly into an audio connection. From the conversation, Shaw was tailing their target. 

John moved towards the opposite side of the street; distant enough that with his enhanced vision, he'd be able to get a glimpse of her without setting off her defences. He could see where she was in the crowd although she was invisible from above, because she cut through the foot traffic like a pike through a duck pond. People scattered ahead of her, sent dark looks in her direction, and parted in a v-shape. Shaw emerged from a wall of people onto the curb, holding a large coffee as camouflage. 

John's body responded before he registered, a skin-crawling, rage-gathering bunch of muscles moving him forward, ready to kill. He set his jaw rigid to stop the shout escaping from his throat. As it was, his posture was threatening enough that she saw him and recognised his interest. She turned sharply in the opposite direction, talking softly to her partner as she walked briskly away. 

"Mr Reese?" Harold sounded worried. "What's happened?" 

Harold's voice galvanised John. Able to concentrate again, he pivoted on his heel before Shaw turned back to examine him more closely. 

"Finch," he said, his voice rough with adrenaline. "I think Shaw is Project Cascade." He didn’t know where he was walking; it was all he could do to do stop himself turning and launching an attack right now in the middle of the street. He was certain she could smell the fury boiling off him. As he walked, the crowd parted nervously around him, just as it had for Shaw. 

He walked faster. His shoulders ached, and he had a desperate, gut-wrenching need to punch someone, to force them to the ground and make them hold very, very still. He stepped out onto a crossing too soon, and a taxi screamed to a halt in front of him. The driver screamed abuse from the open window. 

"HEY, FUCKHEAD, THE HELL YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" The horn sounded, the man stunk of sweat and last night's beer, there was a low hiss of air from the right rear tire, and John was definitely going to put a bullet into the car horn if that asshole didn't ease off it right now. Even the colour of the cab made him angry. 

"Mr Reese," Harold's voice was clipped and calm, like an air traffic controller. "Listen to me. Pay attention to just my voice, please. I'd like you to return to the library. To do that, you'll need to turn left at the next corner…" 

Harold walked him all the way back to the library that way: a voice in his ear as good as a presence beside him. It got him back in one piece, but John was crawling with agitation by the time he set foot on the stairs. 

Harold was waiting for him in the middle of the room. John, still caught up in defensiveness and territoriality, batted at Harold's hand with an angry snarl. He was torn between wanting to shove Harold hard in the chest, and at the same time, drag him off somewhere dark and quiet to keep him safe. Bear started up from his bed with a nervous bark, and made a dart for the space between Harold and John, his ears unhappily back and his tail tucked. 

"Bear, volg," said Harold, one hand by his side. Bear, glad of orders in this unsettled room, hurried to heel. Harold's fingertips brushed Bear's head, and Bear's hackles settled. It was one less source of anxiety in the room. John managed to pull in a deeper breath. His ribs felt sore and tight, like he'd been breathing shallowly all the way back to the library. 

"You want me to heel, too, Finch?" he said, with ten times the calm he actually felt. 

Harold hadn't broken John's gaze yet. "I'm here, Mr Reese. Whenever you need help." His voice, soft and calm, was an anchor, pulling John's focus back into shape. 

John took another breath, and let it out slowly. This was the difference between Cascade and who he was now: he got to choose. He could probably bring himself out of this on his own, manage the overload and the anger. It would take time and effort, but it would come to heel, just as Bear did. They didn't like him to know that, in Cascade. They liked him reliant on his Guide as much as possible. Harold did not encourage such dependence, but offered help freely, without obligation, but with love and trust. John had never been good at asking for help, but Harold had given him freedom to find a way to do it easily. It made John better: better able to help people, better able to protect his team. 

He took a small step towards Harold, with his fingers out to appease Bear. "Yeah," he said, softly. "I think that would be good." 

Harold slid his fingers between John's, and pressed one hand to John's face, cupping it, bringing it down slightly to look into his eyes. Inside his head, John heard wind chimes, cool and gentle, a sound he could follow towards calm. It was never painful when Harold sought out the raw, angry places in his mind, not like it was with Mark. Where Mark cauterised or aggravated according to his need, Harold soothed, and he never, ever touched John's decision-making centres, never tried to alter his perception or his emotional state. If he had to describe it, John would have said it felt like someone straightening books on a shelf: a gentle bustling that left behind order, sense and comfort. 

"She certainly does seem hyper-aware," Harold said, as he brushed the visual memory of seeing Shaw in the street. "And your response, this is typical of Project Cascade?" 

"We're very territorial." John remembered the first time he met Kara and the way he had leapt for her, ready to tear out her throat with his teeth. Mark had let them go at it for a bit; it would make things easier, he said, if they got it out of their systems early. He claimed he didn't have time to manage two sparring Sentinels in the field, not while he was running missions as well. John could keep it under control – Kara was a particularly good teacher when it came to subverting urges – but it was always there, an angry hunger he learned to ignore. Kara, with her toothy grin and snide comments, was always in better control of that particular instinct. The whole time, every mission, she loved watching him snarl and twist against it. Kara was better than John at a lot of Cascade business. She said it was because he let himself care. That was an impediment to the work, in her view. 

"I suppose territoriality is a reasonable response: this has become your home, after all." Harold said it casually, as if having a home was something that anyone would expect to have. John weighed up the concept while Harold worked, and decided that he liked the idea of having somewhere so safe and familiar that he'd want to defend it. 

It wouldn't have been a home without Finch, though. John leaned his head on Finch's shoulder, breathing in sencha and silk, the almonds from the pastries this morning, pushing away the ghosts of Cascade and his past. Finch was here, and he would help John to not hurt Shaw. 

As Harold moved about John's thoughts, soothing and settling, John realised Shaw had probably never felt this, this depth of trust, this sense of safety and respect. Cole seemed like a decent guy, but still, it was like looking at a cage you used to occupy and finding someone new in it. He wanted to tear that cage apart, make sure nobody could use it ever again, but on a practical level, the best they'd likely manage would be to let Shaw out. He'd get her free, he promised himself. 

"Yes," said Harold, who had caught the unspoken wish while he hovered in John's mind. "We are going to help them both."


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Canon character death in this chapter: Michael Cole, as per the events in 2.16 Relevance.

**2006**

John came out of the surgery into a world that swirled with colour and sound, even in the sterile white of the infirmary. His mouth was dry from the anaesthetic and the chemical cocktail they'd given him to wake his brain up, but above the taste of plastic tubing and bottled oxygen, there was a whole conversation of odours drifting through the air in an honest to god scent trail. In the hospital bed, he turned his head like a bloodhound, following the smell of a good burger and fries brought in from off-base. His mouth watered. 

Beside his bed, oddly muffled in comparison to the strength of his sense of smell, one of the surgeons spoke. "Responding to extra-sensory stimuli already. That's a good sign." 

In the recovery phase of the surgery, John learned more about the project he'd signed onto, through muttered conversations at the end of his bed that were nonetheless perfectly clear to him, things he wasn't classified to know. This was the second phase of the project, started once the survival rate of the activation process cleared fifty percent. Project Cascade started months after the planes hit the Twin Towers, and five years later had entered the second phase. They'd been screening elite military units for a year; the CIA recruiters had already had a report of his genetic eligibility when they'd approached him. He was the eighth soldier to go through the treatment which woke up the parts of his brain that, through some genetic lottery, would make him a better operative in the field, able to see and hear and smell at a higher level than baseline humans. 

The critical point was five days after the procedure, the nurses said. He'd be able to start learning how to use his new abilities, start working towards getting out in the field. On the third day, though, his hearing overloaded; sounds became distorted and his sense of them muddled. A conversation felt like a drumbeat on his temples, rich and resonant. A dropped tray was hot shrapnel burying under his skin. On the fourth day, he had his first seizure and after that nothing was right. Sight was sound was taste, a swirl of flashing colour and brassy trumpets and thick, chemical oblivion. 

There were more doctors, then, their sensory presence sliding over John's body like wet leaves. Then came the squeak and clatter of the operating theatre again and the thick, soapy taste of anaesthetic burning his throat. Once, he remembered the visceral thup-thup of a chopper ringing through his body, and for a while he was reliving an airlift with his unit out of Sheberghan, breathing dust and feeling charge build under his fingertips as the rotors spun. 

That hallucination was vivid and prolonged, and he only came out of it at the request of a voice, a quiet voice that cut through the clouds and confusion, speaking without echoes or sensory feedback. The words hung before him, so still that he wasn't sure they had been spoken at all. 

_Sleep now. Your mind is protected here._

It told him to sleep, and so he did. His dreams were still vivid, but beautiful, filled with clouds cut through by tall glass spires. It was incredibly peaceful, and he slept deeply for the first time since the surgery. 

That didn't mean his senses had settled, or that he was any use at all to the project. John woke in a padded room, insulated so thickly that even his senses couldn't detect more than the soft footsteps of nurses outside in cloth slippers. At intervals he should have been able to track, a plastic tray slid through a slot in the door, and every time, the slick noise made him jump. He didn't try to escape; the only time he even rattled the handle the noise cut into him like it was cracking bone. He awoke on the carpeted floor in the dim light that indicated night. The pain and confusion that followed stopped him thinking about the world outside. The idea of walking down a road while cars roared past him turned his stomach with fear, when he'd never feared pain, not once in his military career. Firing a gun seemed an impossibility. He spent hours fascinated by the tick-tick of the wire-wrapped lights above him, or the complex weave of the cotton sheet on his bed. 

He was sure there were other people in cells like this, though he heard nothing but nurses passing in their felt-soled shoes. The window in the door was opaque, and his vision alternately focused on the crazed pattern of the frosted glass or the shadowed figures moving in the hallway outside. Everything was muted: the grey of the walls, the soft pile of his institutional pyjamas, the pad of footsteps outside. John was anaesthetised by it. Between blinding headaches, meals and sleep, the days slid past in a dull and unchallenging silence. 

There was no way to know how much time had passed when the door was flung open. It moved fast, bounced off the wall in recoil, then a man stopped it with the tip of his shoe. The noise was crisp, and threw echoes that rang down the corridor behind him. It was the loudest thing since the hospital. John folded, his legs cut out from under him by the effect of that single sound, and he simply knelt on the thick carpet in the middle of the room. 

The man was thin, his skin stretched tight over a receding hairline, with dark brows and a broad smile. His eyes were not smiling. John took a quick breath in the silence, and tasted a city, jet fuel, gun oil, apples. His head swam with the sensory input. The insulated shell that had kept him safe was fracturing. 

"On your feet, solider," the man said, lounging against the frame with nothing resembling military posture. He held something in his hand, completely obscured, but John heard the electrical charge build inside it, and not knowing if it was a bomb or a cell phone or a TV remote, he clambered to his feet and launched in the man's direction. A button clicked, and John's skin prickled, waiting for electricity or fire or something. His heightened awareness meant that the screaming guitars coming from the tiny but powerful speaker made him stagger backwards with one arm over his face, protecting his eyes, ridiculously.

"I chose this track because it gives you thirty two bars till the drums kick in," said the man. "It'll hurt when they do. One of you guys dropped dead on the spot. I'm Mark, by the way. Mark Snow. Hopefully we'll be a team. If it isn't death by death metal." 

John gasped and tried to balance against sudden and swimming vertigo. "Turn it off!" he said, voice hoarse from disuse. 

"Nope," said Mark. "I'm not risking my ass if you don't have the intestinal fortitude to look after yourself. I'll make it stop if you get over here and we make the right connections." 

The guitars were rising in pitch and volume. John moaned and stumbled a few steps forward. 

"Atta boy. Figure it out fast, now. I can sort the sounds; tone it all down for you. But I won't lift a finger if you're not worth it." Mark tilted his head, listening to the music. "Oops, here comes the first verse." 

The guitars were challenged by a chorus of screaming. Seven men, John's traitorous mind told him. Anger swelled inside him, at the man lounging insolently in the doorway, and at himself, for being unable to protect himself, a quality he'd valued since he was a child on the school yard. He lurched forward, determined to do something, even it was only to collapse on this Mark and drag him to the floor. 

"Knew you had it in you, John," Mark said. "They think you're a write-off, but I know there's a killer in there somewhere. Come on, let's see if we're simpatico." 

John lunged and caught Mark around the chest. He felt the press of a gun, and he'd gotten a hand into the holster before he realised that his ears were no longer ringing. The music had receded, and though it was still at the same tooth-shaking volume, it didn't make him see stars or want to vomit. The drums finally kicked in, and John didn't even care. Something was tamping down the sensory input, and he could no longer feel the music against his skin. It was bliss, euphoric, the relief of the dentist drill backing off, and John laughed. He leaned against Mark's chest, breathing nothing but clean laundry and a faint trace of cologne. They were both sitting on the soft carpet, legs inelegantly tangled. 

Mark rested his chin against John's head. "Oh yeah, feel that bond settle in? We're going to make magic, Johnny boy. Just wait till you meet Kara; you two are going to be deadly."

Everything was fading into perspective now: the constant rattle of an air vent John hadn't even really identified, the harshness of the lights in their wire cages, the annoying plush of his flannel pyjamas; all of them now unobtrusive. His brain spun its wheels for a moment, searching for the massive data input that had dropped away, then started to generate thoughts by itself. 

"What day is it?" he asked, not moving from Mark's grip. "What did you do to me? Will it last for long? Where is this place?" There was a heaviness over his skull, as if someone was pressing on it, like the way you press on a temple to stop a headache. Whatever it was, despite the oppressive sensation, John didn't want it to ever go away. Not if it meant going back to the madness of sensory overload. 

"This works pretty easy," said Mark. "You feel it, and I stop it from hurting. If there's anything you don't want to feel, I shut it down. I'm like the panty girdle that stops you hanging it all out." 

John took another deep and satisfying breath; he wasn't sure he'd even been breathing properly while he was in this room. He suddenly had a craving for food with taste and texture: crispy onion rings from that burger place near his childhood home, sushi with the bite of pickled ginger and a clamour of Japanese voices, the rustle of a new bag of corn chips and the crunch of them echoing inside his head. 

Mark's stomach rumbled in response. "Thanks for that, John. Now I'm going to be hangry when I deal with the hospital administrator." He tightened his arms around John's shoulders. "Jesus, you're skin and bones. We're going to have to build you up before we let you loose on the world." 

 

**2013**

Shaw still rattled with snippy aggression while they prepped for the raid on Mercer's apartment. 

"Come on, Shaw, you love New York." Next to her in the van, Cole made a tentative mental reach for her to settle her agitation, but she pushed him out mentally in irritation. 

"I never told you that about New York," she said. "Don't lift shit out of my brain, unless you want more than a bloody nose." It was true though: she couldn't have given a damn about one city or the other, not until her powers were activated. Then, for some freaky Cascade reason, Manhattan had always felt friendlier than other places. It bugged Shaw that Cole had seen it; even though she trusted him more than any other person, it was a little more personal than she liked to get. 

"Okay!" he said. "But if you don't let me sort the data, you're never going to know what that guy was all about this morning." He was busy loading data onto a thumb drive, while Shaw checked and re-checked her weapon. "You know, he was probably hitting on you." This got him a punch in the arm, which made him laugh, and not punch her back.

Shaw let Cole run the visuals from this morning, though she was certain he was right. If that guy was any kind of threat worth worrying about, he never would have let her see him. And he did see her. Shaw was clear on that, from the challenge in his gaze and the set of his shoulders, which even now, she found difficult to ignore. 

A hand touched her shoulder and she whirled on Cole, teeth bared. 

"Hey, are you zoning already?" He brushed her mind gently and winced. "You want a suppressant before we go in? You're practically vibrating." 

Shaw shook her head. "I'm fine." 

"Hey, Shaw?" Cole spoke while his eyes were fixed on the screen, which, since he could touch-type in the dark under fire, was one of his guilty tells. Shaw scowled at him.

"What did you do? Is this about that girl in Gstaad?" She took his chin and looked into his eyes. "Do I need to go kill someone over this?" 

He shook himself free. "No, god, Shaw. I wanted to ask – that thing about New York…" 

"That thing you lifted from my thoughts?" 

He blushed this time, which was weirder. "Yeah, I'm sorry. I stopped over in DC, and I was talking to Brooks. Did you hear she's assigned to Devon Grice now?" 

Shaw nodded. "I came through Cascade with Grice. He's okay." Still, at the mention of another Sentinel, Shaw felt a prickle of anger at the back of her neck. 

"She said he's the same way about New York. Only New York, same as you. I think, maybe, it has to do with Cascade." Cole copied more folders of info on to that thumb drive. 

"You Guides are so gossipy. You know you're not supposed to be talking to other Cascade personnel, Cole. You're not even supposed to know who they are. Let alone other Sentinels. They're paranoid about us keeping fraternisation to a minimum. You know, so we don't kill each other with our teeth." 

Cole smiled at her, the stupid smile he used when he was trying to convince her of a plan she disagreed with. "What if there's something to it, though? You know that thing you do, when you push back at me? Grice can do it too, though apparently he's too much of a gentleman to use it." 

Shaw rolled her eyes at this. "You saying I'm not gentlemanly enough for you, Cole?" 

"Stop fucking around, Shaw, I'm trying to tell you something. The Sentinels who have that extra push, you know, they're the ones that are all weird about New York. I was wondering what's so special about New York."

Shaw checked her weapon one more time. This conversation was hitting her buttons: other Sentinels, getting reassigned to different Guides, stupid Cascade practices. "Well, it's not that we're into musical theatre, Cole. Does this have a point?"

"Remember the Aquino mission?" 

Shaw gave him a flat-eyed stare. That had been a clusterfuck, early on in their partnership. "The one where you puked in the car? Kind of unforgettable." 

"It was wrong, Shaw, there was something really wrong about that mission. He knew what Sentinels were, Shaw. He looked for me. He knew to check for the Guide." 

"He was looking for help, Cole, because I was about to put two in his skull." 

Cole was finally finished with his laptop. He closed it, and shoved the thumbdrive into a pocket. "He had six flights to New York, the same year the Gen II Sentinels were being activated," he said. "I'm pretty sure he was involved." 

Shaw grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close. He reeked of guilt and uncertainty, which was not a thing she wanted coming off her Guide right before a mission. "What did you do, Cole?"

"I've got a contact in Langley that traced a financial connection between him and some of the off-shore Cascade shell companies. When we got the mission, we were told he was selling secrets, but now I know he wasn't being paid by any foreign governments. He was working on Cascade's dollar. At least some of the time. And then we killed him." He held still in her grip, and his face was serious. This, Shaw could tell, he was certain about. And worried, for her and the other Sentinels.

Shaw didn't know whether to shake him or pull him close to tell him the few things she'd figured out, in training with the other Gen III active Sentinels. Fortunately, their target Mercer got a text and left his apartment, giving them a window to search it. She let him go, smoothed down his collar where it was all rucked up. 

"Let's go get this sorted," she said. "We can talk about it after." 

Inside Mercer's place, there was a weird atmosphere, above and beyond the kind of funk Shaw expected in a dive like this. She tasted charcoal on the air, sulphur and metal floating like a greasy mist in the air. 

"Been a lot of weaponry here," she said, as they skittered up the stairs to Mercer's place. 

She cleared the corridor and kicked open the door. Mercer's room was as sparse as she'd have thought, and as filthy: furniture reeking of many, many bodies pressed against the upholstery, the clatter of legs as roaches in the corners crawled over each other in the sudden light. The curtains practically radiated cigarette smoke. Shaw yanked them closed, then wiped her hand on her pants. 

Cole slid to a halt in front of Mercer's laptop and got to work while Shaw prowled the perimeter. She was bristling, her instincts telling her this mission was very, very wrong, though there was nothing solid on which to hang this suspicion. Frustrated, she reached for Cole's mind, seeking a boost to her abilities so she could pin down what was making her twitch. 

"Stop it," said Cole, brushing her off easily. "I'm trying to concentrate. Wait, that was easy." He tapped away, and Shaw tried to figure out why it bugged her that the computer was the cleanest thing here; why so many people had touched it. 

Cole's muscles in his back tightened and Shaw was beside him before he'd pulled himself fully upright in front of the screen. "What?" she said, sharp and jittery. She was up on the balls of her feet ready to spring, but there was nothing to spring for. Yet. 

"Well," said Cole. "Someone's been paying Mercer, all right. They've been organising him with weapons, cash, a time frame." 

Shaw hated computer screens; they flickered and hummed and gave off heat in a way that set her teeth on edge. "So, what's the ID on the email?" 

Cole's fingers slowed on the keyboard. "It's us. Straight out of our accounts, with money I know we didn't have yesterday." 

"What?" That was unbelievable. Shaw grabbed the screen and pulled it in her direction. She saw conversations between herself and Mercer, telling him how to build himself an IED, where to plant it for the greatest damage. 

A murmuring from street level dragged her attention to the window. Voices whispered down there, then came the click-chunk of someone cocking a weapon. That gave her enough time to turn her face away, before the sound of weapon fire and the muzzle flash could dazzle her. At the same time, she heard Cole's sharp intake of breath. 

"What?" Shaw kept her senses trained on the street and whatever that fracas was about. 

Cole turned the screen in her direction, and she saw a text box in the middle of the screen. 

_> It's a trap. Get out of there. Now._

Her body was faster than her reading comprehension, and she had pulled Cole out of his chair by the time she understood what the message meant. 

"Ambush," she said, under her breath. There were footsteps coming over the threshold of the building, quiet as hell, but not to her ears. Four men, standard formation. And another one, even quieter, bringing up the rear. Her skin crawled at that last trace; he'd be the one to watch. She held out her hand: five fingers, five hostiles. 

Cole drew his gun and they stood back-to-back, ready to act. "Can you get us an exit?" he said, subvocalizing so only she could hear. 

She nodded, and gestured to the next room. The window there led to an alley, and they could make it to ground level via a Dumpster. She let tendrils of awareness go that way, but there was nothing living there except for rats. 

The sonic grenade went off while she was at her most vulnerable, senses stretched in all directions: a mix of ultra and sub-sonic clatter that curdled her guts and set her head on fire. She doubled over with a groan. It was silent to human ears, but Cole felt the wave of the assault through their link and caught Shaw by the elbow before she hit the ground. 

"Up you go," he said, the words coming through their bond. Cole didn't have to say anything as he tamped down the pain from the grenade. He couldn't get her hearing back until the physicality of the damage had settled, so she'd be functionally deaf for a bit, but she could operate on four senses perfectly well. Her skin prickled and her vision sharpened in response to the temporary hearing loss, and she saw the dust jumping on the floorboards. She bent and touched the wooden floor: the vibrations were footsteps coming up the stairs. She spun to cover the door, but it was too late. A spray of bullets came through the flimsy plywood, and connected with Cole's back. 

She hauled Cole out of range while she caught a mindful of confusion down their link. She squashed that down in favour of action: returned fire through the door, squeezed her eyelids shut when the percussive whomp of a flash grenade hit her gut. Damn it, they were going after all her senses, which meant they knew exactly who they were dealing with. When the room was secure, she leant, blinking and deaf, over Cole's body to assess the damage. Now she understood Cole's griping about feedback when she got shot, though if this was what he was talking about, he was being generous. It was almost unbearable: lights too bright, the smell of blood everywhere, the bewilderment of muscles not obeying, and pain so intense that everything else went white. Shaw was overloaded; she knew it from the way her hands trembled on Cole's chest, and the fact that words wouldn't string together into a sentence. She couldn't hear her own voice.

"I don't… I need to call Control, get help…" There was too much blood, and none of it hers. She was pretty sure Cole knew exactly how bad he was hurt. He smiled up at her, his eyes so blue that they pulled her focus back into place. 

"Go on," said Cole. "You go, be amazing and live." His words were completely clear inside her head, his face clear and open despite the blood splatter. 

Shaw opened her mouth to tell him to shut the fuck up and let her get on with saving his ass, when she felt him in her mind, pushing hard. Methodically, as if he'd done this a hundred times, he strengthened their bond, doing all the things they were trained not to do. He made connection after connection, until the sensory confusion settled into utter clarity. She could see and hear everything now, as if she soared above the house and gazed down on a floor plan: four gunmen inside the structure, here, here, and here. Three gunmen bleeding on the street, with injuries to knees and arms. A voice on someone's radio, sending in a second team. 

By the time she finished staring around her in wonder, Cole had slipped away, smiling as if the sight of Shaw using her powers fully for the first time in her life was the best final image he could imagine. 

This new way of seeing informed her that Cole was dead: he had no heartbeat, no electrical activity in his brain, and just like that, her best friend had transformed from a living being to a hunk of meat. 

There was no time to dwell on that, though, because a new assault team was on the stairs. Shaw mapped out a plan of action, flying high on the bond Cole had just made complete. Team two didn't stand a chance; she cropped them down between breaths, shooting outside her peripheral vision, through doors and into the roof. The guy who rolled the flash grenade into the room – identifiable by the trace of phosphorous on his fingertips – got a grenade of his own under his breathing mask, and Shaw could easily filter out the sound of his screams and the scrabbling on the plastic of the mask. 

That was satisfying, except that then she turned to face a muzzle; she'd missed one. 

"Sorry, Cole," she thought, waiting for the impact on her body, feeling guilty about wasting his final gift. Then the guy went down, shot by someone moving silently in the hallway. 

Shaw's reflexes were already hyped up, but whatever lurked in the corridor kicked them into overdrive. Lip pulled back over her teeth in a snarl, she swung the gun in that direction. Her gut screamed at her that death stood there in the shadows, and she was suddenly angry, in a way that she'd only felt when they'd first activated her abilities. 

"Get out here!" she said through clenched teeth. "Let me kill you." 

He stepped out of the shadows, the guy from this morning, tall and focused, his gun loose in his hand. "Shaw, listen," he said. "My name is John, and I'm here to help you."

Shaw put three bullets in him then dived through the window.


	4. Chapter 4

**2010**

In the days after the explosion, Harold flew into pieces too, breaking apart like the ferry dock, losing functionality in pain. There were so many things to do, and yet all he could do was hide in the library and filter footage from the explosion searching for an explanation. 

He started with film from weeks before the bombing, moving through it frame by frame while his own bones healed. Each face he captured was pushed through facial recognition, each licence plate identified, each financial transaction tied to an identity. He was left with a handful of sand, thirty or so inexplicable events, and a swell of nausea every time he saw his own shoulders move towards the terminal before the screen went white. 

One face bounced out of the usual sieving of identification: a man caught on a delivery dashboard cam, ushering the suicide bomber from one car to another in an underpass. Harold focused his attention on him, chasing him through various aliases and across borders, until he had a reasonably solid name to put to the face: Robert Hersh, known familiarly as George. The name was familiar; he'd seen it on the lists of personnel attached to Project Cascade. Hersh had been the first of the identified Guides, discovered accidentally to have some inexplicable ability to prevent the Sentinels from losing their minds. 

When he recognised the connection, it was the middle of the night, though he only knew this from the cold at his ankles and the lack of light. He stared at the man's face as he calmly manhandled the bomber. Harold should have expected a link between the ferry bombing and Project Cascade; after all, Northern Lights and Cascade had grown up together, had always been intertwined. So Hersh was a Guide. Was Harold one also? Would they be able to recognise the ability in each other?

This search for identity and a new definition of himself was a welcome respite from the unfamiliar burn of vengeful anger fuelling him as he stalked Alicia Corwin. He kept a careful track of Agent Hersh's movements. In January after the bombing, he appeared in Manhattan for some ridiculous, furtive task, the details of which Harold didn't even bother to scrape from the ISA database. Harold was there, though, when Hersh alighted from a cab at the United Nations. From behind a newspaper, he observed Hersh going about his business, and saw nothing of himself in the man, felt nothing particular, none of the reported connections described in Project Cascade. It frustrated him, sitting on a bench in the cold, feeling his muscles contract – something he'd pay for later – and still knowing nothing of what made Hersh different from other people, or how Project Cascade had led him to work for people who would bomb a public place to kill one person. 

He didn't understand so he kept moving, step by painful step: trying to make up for the mistakes he had made, trying to continue Nathan's secret work, all the while knowing that his research had been suborned into Cascade, a project that built killers and their handlers, then released them on the world to wreak havoc. To misuse the Machine that Harold had built to save the world. To kill Nathan, and to destroy Harold's life with Grace. 

Eventually, though, the numbers overwhelmed him. There were just too many people in immediate danger. The work was enough to drown out any non-essential concerns. 

He didn't know exactly why he kept the photo of Jessica Arndt's ex-boyfriend, John. At first, he was an obvious danger in the woman's life: an ex-Special Forces, CIA wetwork specialist. As Jessica's number came up again and again, the nature of John's work meant that he posed little immediate threat, not when he was currently in London or Nairobi or Tallinn. He didn't discard the photo – there was something compelling about the man's expression – he simply left it on his desk, picking it up from time to time as he cleared away clutter. 

It was a number that brought the man's face into focus again. 

"Can you do some kind of online face matching on these two?" The repugnant Mr Dillinger had only the barest grasp on what Harold was able to do. Harold sighed, and pulled up the photos he'd been sent, then the sigh caught in his throat. 

It was Jessica Arndt's ex-boyfriend again, the same face as on the grainy capture from Hamburg Airport. The resolution was better, though, and Harold could see every plane on his face. He could have sworn he knew what Reese was thinking; his female partner, too. To him, they were transparently predators, terrifyingly calm about it, and yet nobody around them could tell. 

"That man is CIA," he told Mr Dillinger. You idiot, you idiot, he said to himself with rising dread. "Take great care not to be seen." There wasn't much point to the warning, even if Dillinger was too foolish to listen. Dillinger's cover was certainly broken, though there was no way to explain how Harold was so certain. While Dillinger bragged, Harold reached back to rub his neck, and found all the hair there standing on end. 

Later in the afternoon, while the newly rescued Daniel Casey dozed, Harold worked on altering the sample of code the man had lifted from the Machine's operating system. Daniel had made quite the coup in snatching the data. Harold shot a fond glance across the table to where Daniel was curled in an armchair, exhausted from being on the run. If this was the caliber of coding coming up through the ranks, perhaps the future would not be as bleak as Harold had predicted. Still, it was going to be a neat trick avoiding the CIA team on their tails. Without realising it, his hands had brought up the image of John and his partner, and he examined the expression on his face, the erect posture and focused body language. Weary and deadly, like a thing in a cage. Rilke's Panther, he thought, suddenly. _A thousand bars, and back behind those thousand bars, no world._

After Mr Dillinger's attempt to steal the laptop, Harold raced through the city, tracking Daniel Casey's phone while trying to negotiate with him. The phone led him to Red Hook, where Lester Strickland, the forger, kept his shop. 

Harold meant to park a safe distance from the pier, but somehow he ended up facing it. He found himself craning his neck, which complained vociferously, to see. Something was happening there, something that made his brain twitch for more details. 

In the shadows by the pier, he saw two figures. One was certainly Daniel Casey: even if they'd only met today, Harold recognised the sloped shoulders of a coder. The other was tall, and held a gun with the same ease with which Harold used a keyboard, as if it were simply an extension of himself. That would be John Reese, the CIA agent. Harold slid down as low as he could comfortably get, and tried to look like someone too drunk to handle the drive home. 

It was astonishing to actually be close to him. The little frisson Harold felt whenever he saw John's photo was candlelight to the experience of being in his presence. It was difficult to look away from him, standing there in the half-light, about to kill an innocent man. 

Look at him, look at him, look at him. The primal part of his brain urged him on, told him to get out of the car, to walk over there, to put his hands on him, to help him. Harold gasped in his seat, trying to understand what was happening. What was so remarkable about John Reese?

There was an itch in his head, an odd sensation, like hearing a distant whisper, the words undefined. Harold raised fingers to his temple, confused and straining to catch what he was missing. 

He lost the battle with himself; John Reese was too compelling for Harold not to look. He edged upwards, glanced over the rim of the windshield, and was lost in a wave of sensation. It was tangled and vivid and patently not Harold's own as it washed into his mind. He lost his grip on the wheel, slid back against the seat, and not even the pain of that unexpected movement was enough to break the flood of… of… of data. 

So much information, and all of it pouring from John Reese. 

Harold's throat went dry as information piled down on him in a great mess, the upending of a library, images raining down on him in full colour and sound. He had tiny glimpses of knowledge: heart rates, chemical analyses, proximity. Once, in vertiginous double vision, he saw himself sitting slumped in his car, heard his own heartbeat; the image was labelled 'white male, glasses, threat level minimal.' 

Three seconds into the onslaught, though, Harold could pick out patterns in the stream of data, and with that understanding he could reach for more input and faster flow. Not long after that, he unlocked the code to the patterns: low blue/green notes were muscle memory (slide safety off, slip finger against trigger, one gentle squeeze, absorb recoil, seek target, repeat); the brilliant but distracting scintillations of colour around him belonged to sensory awareness (cold sea air from the docks, a terrified, fluttering heartbeat, the interplay of shadow and light from the buildings, the sickly-sweet breath of the homeless man asleep by the wall); and then, curiously, a crude wooden palisade, poorly built and clearly imposed on John by another person. Someone like Harold, perhaps, who could see this incredible mental vista. The fence was ugly in its function, unlike everything endogenous to John's mind, and it held back a bundled mass of glass shards, richly coloured and deadly sharp. Harold's mental fingers twitched to repair or disassemble that fence – if they wanted people to stay out, they should build it better – but a lesson learned early in his chosen profession was not to tinker until you understood the system. He imagined himself backing away, step by quiet step, until he was separate from John's being. The excess of data assaulting him receded accordingly, though he could still sense John thinking. It was a strange thing, to feel thought divorced from one's own, like the wings of a bird against your palms as you gently held it. 

He sunk lower in the driver's seat, despite the complaints from his back and neck. Don't see me, don't see me, he willed the man, and John stepped a little closer to Daniel, raising his gun. Harold drew a panicked breath then held it, so he didn't attract more attention. Somehow Harold had been responsible for that, had put Daniel Casey in even more danger. 

At the same time, he knew that John's pupils had widened to admit more light, to increase his focus and accuracy, and with it, John's reflexes sharpened. In front of him, Daniel Casey was terrified, sweating and dry-mouthed, exuding confusion and fear like an animal on the dissecting table. Harold saw what John saw, Harold stood with John as he weighed up his orders against Casey's reactions. He was trying to find a good decision, one that would leave both Casey and Reese alive. John was reaching for a familiar feeling, something he believed lost to him. Suddenly, Harold understood what the paling fence must stand for, and why it had been put in place. 

John Reese was part of Project Cascade, probably the same generation of the experiment that had used Harold's data to identify the need for Guides. John was a Sentinel. Harold was the other half of the equation, a Guide. What had happened with Grace had not simply been empathy with someone he loved, it had been this, only in a gentler, natural form. The mental landscape Harold had encountered had been anything but natural: Project Cascade had enhanced John's abilities to sense, and had also compartmentalised the acts his government asked of him. 

Harold turned the engine over, and swung the car around slowly on the empty street, as if he had decided to turn tail and drunkenly head home. He picked a wavering path that took him slowly past the edge of the pier, and in the moment that John swung a lightning fast glance over his shoulder, Harold reached into his mind. Somehow he understood what had to be done, so with fingers nimble and knowing, Harold plucked one glass shard that pushed hardest against the fence holding John's emotions in place. It was warm to the touch and burgundy in the clear light that illuminated John's inner world. Harold held it carefully and it became faceted and whole. When he released it, John's compassion flew spinning from his hands, spreading crimson light across the surgically precise light of John's mindscape. 

As he drove, he heard a gunshot, felt a muted, feverish triumph that was only partly his own, and he knew that even if things would not be all right, that Daniel Casey was at least safe now. 

 

**2013**

The vest took the bullets but as he fell, John appreciated the art of Shaw's targeting: three shots close together above his heart, which stuttered under the impact. He could stop a heart with a punch, but he'd never seen someone do it with bullets. His shoulders hit the ground, and he watched the dust billow up around him. The motes sparkled and danced in slow motion, hypnotic as ocean waves, and he slipped away into a warm, foetid darkness from two years ago. 

The air in the subway burned the back of his throat, and added to the rawness carved by the cheap whiskey in the paper-wrapped bottle he clutched to his chest. People assumed he travelled up and down the line for the warmth, but it was the catastrophic assault on his senses that he craved, like standing by a giant bass speaker until there was nothing but numbness inside his head. 

He'd come to New York for no particular reason. He'd handed money over at train stations, drunk and with his ears plugged, and he could have ended up anywhere. When he disembarked at Grand Central, there was a finality to his steps, and he understood he wouldn't be leaving this city again. 

It was never meant to be a long-term solution. John could feel his life subsiding beneath him without a Guide to keep his senses collated, but the only Guides were part of Project Cascade, and there was nothing but a bullet waiting for him there. Besides, cleaving to a Cascade Guide was like sliding along a razor: surgical and so precise that you didn't feel the sting till later. He was done with all of that: all he needed was enough time to collect his thoughts, and then he'd find his own way out of the world. He didn't know why he hadn't done it in New Rochelle. It honestly hadn't occurred to him until he was at a bus station deciding what direction to take. New York had always seemed oddly welcoming, a place that cushioned him somehow from Mark's control and Kara's poison. 

He'd tried once already: slipped over the outer railing on the George Washington Bridge, stood there leaning out over the water, watching the reflected lights ripple and sway. He waited for a long time, for that inner voice to tell him to let go, but he mustn't have been drunk enough, because there was just silence. And eventually, the decision to climb back over before the police found him. 

He'd get there, eventually, he knew. Things had to align: the right level of intoxication and motivation, getting on the right train at the right time to bring him to the right place to end everything. Then he'd do it. It hadn't happened yet, but he was ready. 

He rocked with the movement of the train, a gentle back and forth that would have lulled him to sleep if it weren't for the thugs making their way through the carriages. The problem was that that one of them had a touch of the Sentinel gift themselves, probably activated with drugs or some long gaming session. It was a quality the kid subconsciously took advantage of, lording it over his friends, strutting down the train carriage with his chest puffed out, certain of his own strength. John eyed him through half-closed eyes: the enhanced senses didn't seem to be Sentinel-strong, but they were enough that the antagonistic instincts between two Sentinel-types riled him up a little. He couldn't not come and give John a poke. 

John sat still for a moment, since this kid was nothing, reeking of expensive clothes and liquor with an edge of fear desperately concealed behind his swagger. Then the kid swung into his field of vision, and the fight was on. John blurred into action, ending the fracas before it began. Then, ankle-deep in moaning bodies, he zoned, right back to the rigors of Gilgit's underworld, with Mark's mental fist clenching tight around John's senses. Outside of the hallucination, there was a feeling of movement, of people gently guiding him this way and that, but he didn't come up out of it for a long time. When he did, he was in a quiet room, close to a space filled with people. John heard a dozen conversations in five languages, felt the metallic clink of handcuffs against plywood desks, and smelled a rich and soup-like mix of sweat, drugs, cheap shirts and bad breath. It had a distinctive sour tang, the bullpen of a police precinct in a major metropolis, but somehow the thin glass window kept the hubbub at bay. He didn't know why, until his hearing pulled in closer and he picked up the slow, even heartbeat of the woman standing beside him. She wasn't a trained Guide, but the absolute calm in her posture and breathing extended in his direction. Natural talent, he realised in a panic. Don't let her know, don't let her see how much power she could have over him. 

"I figured it would be better for you in here," said the woman. Her voice was firm but kind, and with it, a little of the sensory turmoil pulled back. Despite his promise to himself, John's shoulders settled a little lower, though he still crouched forward in his seat. 

She was armed, but she didn't wear a uniform, and her expression was unafraid and open. "I worked with some of you guys, over there, and I know that glazed expression means you're kinda overloaded." The way she said 'over there' with a little shrug was enough that John felt a ghost of desert wind brush his cheek. She'd served, and in the Middle East. She'd worked with Cascade soldiers, and they somehow hadn't killed her. That pinch of natural talent was probably why; she wouldn't have tracked as a threat to any of the Sentinels, and thus the Guides wouldn't have known she was aware of the nature of their charges. He rocked forward onto the balls of his feet, still sitting but ready to act. 

"Easy, now," the woman said. "I figured back then it was best to leave you guys be for as long as you need it. You all seemed to come out of it eventually. But I've never seen one of you without your little sidekicks, you know? I guess that's why you've been spaced out since the patrol unit brought you in here." She put a plastic glass of water in front of him, replacing the empty one he'd been toying with.

John took the cup, sipped slowly, and looked around him while he waited for words to form. His visual focus jumped forward and back; first a microscope (her pants were wool, there was a little mud worked into the weave of the fabric at the hem,) then a telescope (she was far away, tiny and determined, the glass of the door a halo around her head.) Her voice, though, was warm and close. For a moment, John longed to lean into it, let her take care of everything, teach her how to keep his senses in check without the bloody noses and the migraines. Then he saw the way she was holding the cup: fingers braced inside, so that she didn't smear the prints on the outside surface. She was going to run his prints. There was no way his data wasn't flagged. Mark would be here, sooner or later, and then he'd… he'd… He would not go back to the Project, he'd never let another Guide take hold of his mind. And Mark would not be merciful with this woman, or anyone else John had encountered while he was on the run.

He had an urge to check his watch, though he'd sold his watch weeks ago. Something was odd about that impulse, and he closed his eyes to chase the idea down. He was expecting something to happen, looking forward to it, even: a well-dressed, impeccably coiffured lawyer would appear to escort him from the precinct, to that place by the bridge, where a man waited to meet him, to change everything. This had all happened already. 

Damn it. He'd zoned, and deeply. John concentrated on Harold and the stability that came with hearing his voice. If Harold were here, he'd know not to touch him, he'd sit awkwardly on the floor close enough that John could reach for him if he wanted, and he'd say… He'd say something like… 

"John! John, please. John, there's a van outside the apartment building; they're going to be sending in a clean-up crew. John, can you hear me?" There was the tell tale squeak of Harold's computer chair, clumsy footsteps over the library floor, and the rattle of rarely-used car keys. 

John blinked himself awake, and gasped, a deep, painful breath. He heaved himself up, sitting, legs splayed on the dusty wooden floor, and tapped his earpiece. 

"I'm here, Harold. Stay put – I don't want you out here when the crew comes in. I can make a graceful exit. I'll be back to the library soon." 

Harold's sigh of relief would have been obvious even to someone without enhanced hearing. "I was worried, John. I'm so glad to hear your voice." 

John smiled, and gathered himself together, ready to evade the agents clattering up the stairs. "Me, too," he said, and slipped out a second floor window, climbing easily down the fire escape, despite the bruising in his chest. He was going home, and that was a sense of relief that overcame a lot of pain. 

He limped back to the library a few hours later, once he'd picked himself up out of the dust and evaded the clean-up crew that the ISA had sent to Mercer's building. 

Harold, who'd had a frightening time while John was lying stunned and breathless on the ground, was waiting at the top of the stair with Bear just behind him. He reached for John and pulled him close, ostensibly to check the Kevlar vest for wear and tear, but John felt Harold's thoughts interweaving with his, soothing himself as he soothed John's thoughts too. He was suddenly very glad to be alive, and he found himself grinning like a maniac. 

"You're remarkably cheerful for someone who took three – three! – shots to the chest," said Harold. He eased his hand inside John's shirt and put his fingers through the holes. 

"I was there, Finch, I know how many hits I took," John said, still smiling. Harold was right, though, he was feeling unexpectedly buoyant, considering they'd lost one of their numbers. 

Harold cupped John's face. "What is it?" he said, wonderingly. Harold leaned into John's consciousness and when he touched the ebullient joy there, broke into a smile himself. 

John bent and kissed him, despite the bruises on his sternum and the way his ribs ached from the impact. "She's a survivor," he said. "I think, if we can get her through the next couple of days, she's going to be okay." 

To be honest, he didn't really understand why this fact made him feel so pleased, but it did, despite the territoriality, and the fact that Shaw had shot him without even pausing. He didn't need to think about the why, though, because Harold knew him better than he knew himself. In John's mind, Harold filtered the thoughts with curiosity and care, and John leaned into his palm, heart clenching at the gentle ease of their bond. 

"Oh, I see," said Harold, softly. "You're happy because you won't be alone." 

John looked at him, trying to determine if Harold was pleased or worried about this development, but Harold smiled, and kissed him, too. "I'm glad," he said. "You shouldn't be the only one with these abilities, it's a lot to bear." He took John's hand and led him into the library. "Now, get changed. The smell of gunpowder puts you on edge, and I think we'll all manage better in this fraught situation without any excess aggravation." 

John slipped a finger between two buttons on the ravaged shirt, with a sly sideways look at Harold. Harold made a face of mock-horror, that John would desecrate the sanctity of the library with such licentious behaviour, then laughed, and went back to his terminal. 

When Harold had pulled John from the police precinct, John had been raw and open, barriers worn to nothing from hauling himself out of rural China, from discovering that Jessica was dead. Rational thought was a thing long lost, and his days had been bleak and filled with static, much like those early days in the quiet cells of the military hospital. On top of that, the absence of a Guide, even one as brutal as Mark, meant the noise of the world and the hurts from his past eroded what was left, a river of sensation on a limestone bed.

Then suddenly there had been Harold, who touched his mind with gentle awe, often so softly that John sensed nothing. Harold had stopped the press of the city, quieted the voices of the dead, and gave him space to think for the first time in months. It had taken time to build what they had together. Mark's work had left scars, and when Harold went past those places at first, they screamed raw and painful. For a long time John had resisted what Harold was, had struggled to work the numbers without a Guide. All that time, Harold had been little more than a cool and distant presence in his earpiece. 

Now, though, the damage had been healed, the bond between them was stronger than anything John had ever experienced, and he found he desperately wanted Shaw to know this feeling of satisfaction and security. He poured water into the tiny sink in the bathroom, and washed the scent of gunpowder and blood from his skin as best he could. 

An uncomfortable idea occurred to him: would Harold try to bond with her, as well? Mark had kept two Sentinels on a leash, but he had done so shabbily, grasping tightly to compensate for lack of ability. Could Harold form two bonds and not lose control like Mark did? If anyone could, Harold would be the one; his data processing abilities were phenomenal, and he was never overwhelmed by the information that John could feed to him through their link. Still the thought of sharing this with another Sentinel itched at him, enough that it caught at the edge of Harold's awareness. 

"I can hear you fretting from out here," he called to John. "Come and talk about it." 

John padded down the hallway in his socks, still shirtless, and leaned on the desk, bumping the screen. 

"There's no need to be obstreperous," Harold said. "We'll find a way to make things work." 

"But there's only one of you." John felt ridiculous saying it, like a child at a birthday party being asked to give back a gift. 

Harold shook his head. "We don't know that – we have very little data on natural talent Guides. Detective Carter is one, for a start. I wasn't certain about my own abilities until I met you. It's reasonable to assume there's more people with no idea about their potential." He brushed his fingers along John's hand. "Not everyone is as lucky as me," he said, and John felt the wonder and love in his own mind. 

"Judging from the data I acquired from Michael Cole's computer," Harold said. "It seems that the ability lies hand in hand with a good mind for programming. That's one place we can investigate, when we have the luxury of time." 

"But in the meantime," said John. "She'll have lost a bond, she'll be raw and unhappy, with nobody to help her." This twisted him on a primal level: he wanted Shaw to be free, but the innate territoriality of the Sentinels made him think idly about ripping out her throat with his teeth if she went near Harold. 

This close, Harold could pick that up verbatim. He shuddered. "Please do not," he said. "If at all possible." 

John gave him a miserable look. "You know I'd never," he said. "It's just a knee-jerk response." 

Harold reached out and took John's hands, pulled him to his knees in front of him. He stroked John's damp hair, kissed his forehead and held him tight. "You are the one I love, John," he said. "I can care for Ms Shaw without compromising our relationship or our bond." 

John leaned hard into Harold's arms, and hoped that he was right.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a show-level CIA torture scene that ends with John killing the subject.

**2006**

John and Kara moved through the shadows of the world like two wolves with ears pricked and tongues lolling, chasing down prey with implacable stamina. It wasn't what John had expected, but there was an exhilaration to be found in asking his body to do the remarkable and feeling it respond.

Mark was always there, ready at the end of the mission to diffuse the sensory impact of what they'd seen and done. He ran the missions, directed his two Sentinels where he wanted them to go, then let them off the leash. It was less oversight than John was used to, but Cascade meant that missions had a different approach. They had to be able to adapt and use their abilities differently each time.

The first mission had been a little rocky. On the flight over, Mark had warned him about the territoriality issue. 

"Problem is they haven't figured out what makes us Guides," he said, one leg crossed over the other in the wide first class seat. "So, we gotta run two or three of you guys with only one of us." He reached out and tipped up John's chin. "You okay? Keeping it together?" He'd had them bumped to first, since it was John's first commercial flight since activation. 

John felt Mark press at the edge of his mind; it was getting familiar now, though it still felt a little like someone barging into the bathroom while you were in the middle of something private. He had expected Mark's presence in his mind to be like that dry, quiet voice he'd heard while he was out of his mind in the hospital, but it wasn't; communicating with him mentally was little different from a conversation face to face. 

He took a breath and let down his barriers the way Mark had been teaching him. The plane was not easy: there was a general reek of anxiety hanging about the place under the chemical haze of sanitising shampoo, and the ambient noise even after take-off was constant. He frowned, bracing himself as Mark pushed down on those senses, dulling olfactory and audio perception as if he was sliding switches on a graphic equaliser. 

"That'll be a bit easier for you," Mark said, and settled into his seat. He gave the flight attendant a quick nod and she hurried back with drinks. 

John blinked as he adjusted to the muted sensation, and took the proffered glass. "What do I expect when I meet her?" 

Mark laughed, and took a swig of scotch. "You won't be going in armed, that's for sure." 

As it happened, John tried to rip out Kara's throat. The moment he caught sight of her in the hotel, he literally leapt for her with his teeth bared, his gut writhing with incoherent rage. She laughed, stepped easily to one side and put her foot into his ribs as he fell. He lay there on his back for a moment, his head spinning, trying to understand how a woman half his weight had dropped him so easily. He tried to get to his feet, but he was stricken with vertigo, wild and swooping, bad enough that he couldn't move his arms and legs with any accuracy. There was a familiar heavy sensation in his head. 

"Mark," he managed to gasp, as nausea churned in his guts, replacing rage. Mark had fucked up his balance, made him miss his target, made him vulnerable. 

He could see the toes of Mark's shoes off to one side of him. "Don't panic, John. I just need you to lie still until you get over that killer instinct." 

Kara straddled his body, her grin wide and feral. "So nice to meet you, partner," she said, and pushed her finger into his throat. Her nails were sharp and very, very clean. All John could sense from her was a faint fragrance of soap. He croaked at her, still trying to move his arms, still trying to stop her, despite Mark's interference.

"Rein it in, Stanton," Mark said. He flopped onto the sofa and put his feet on the coffee table. "You can join him on the floor any time this goes overboard." He tapped his temple. "All I gotta do is twitch." 

Kara snarled in Mark's direction, but she eased back the pressure on John's throat. She ground down on his torso, palms resting behind her on his thighs. "You fucking him yet, Mark? When do I get a cut of the action?" She put one hand in her hair, holding onto an imaginary cowboy hat. 

John felt a quaver of guilt and uncertainty from Mark and, improvising, shoved hard with his mind at the tiny fracture in his control. To his surprise, Mark gagged and the vertigo eased. John took the opportunity to flip Kara onto her back, knees on either side of her body. With forefinger and thumb on opposite sides, his fingers spanned the width of her throat easily. She thrashed once, then held very still with her eyes wide. John's mouth was open, tasting fascination and fear drifting upwards from her. His upper lip curled in an involuntary snarl, and he took a deep breath. He wasn't sure what he'd done to Mark, but he'd be damned if he would let Kara Stanton realise that. He fixed an implacable expression on his face and thought about how good it would feel to rip out her belly. 

"We good?" he said, barely moving his lips. "Do I have to take this further?" 

Kara's pupils were dilated, and she ran her fingers down the muscles on his arms. He felt her nails, but she didn't dig them in. 

"Oh, we're better than good," she said. "We might even be amazing." 

The first mission was Budapest: a traitor and his clueless partner. John could smell the lies dripping off the first, and the terror off the second. Kara shot them both. That night in bed Mark wrapped his arms around John's chest, and wiped the lingering smell of blood and fresh dirt from his memory, then sent him out ready for another bout. 

Next mission, in Cairo, Kara paused, leaving their subject dangling headfirst in a bucket of water. She ignored his thrashing, and turned towards John. 

"Hey, lover, you wanna tell me how you do that thing with Mark?" 

John kept count of the man's heartbeat; when he was about to blow a fuse, it was time to give him a little air. "Well, Kara, when two agents love each other very much…" 

Kara snorted, and gave the man a little push, so he rotated gently, his head still under the surface. "Please tell me you're not harbouring any thoughts that you two guys are in love. Mark sleeps with all the newbies. Me included." 

"Hard to believe you were ever a newbie," said John. The man's heartbeat was a slowly decelerating thump beneath the ribs. He checked his watch. "He's down to 50 bpm." 

"So what?" said Kara. "He's not ready to talk. And yeah, I got the same treatment that you did, only I didn't spent a year in the loony bin drooling and counting cracks in the wall." 

John rolled up his sleeves; they'd be taking the man out of the water soon, dead or alive. "Why didn't you? How did you adjust to the sensory overload so quickly?" 

"Tell me how you made Mark stop messing with your head, and I'll give you all the secrets of surviving Cascade." Kara leaned on the man, putting her weight on the ropes. He jerked, regaining a little energy to thrash around again. 

"I told you, I don't know," John said. "Explain to me how you skate backwards – it's like that. Your body can do it or it can't." That was near enough to the truth; he didn't understand why he could hurt Mark that way. He felt certain that Kara couldn't, because if there was a way for her to cause pain, she'd have done it already. He knew she'd tried. He'd heard what Mark did to her when it failed. 

The man's body went limp, though John could still hear his heart clenching in a slow hiccup. Kara crouched down to better observe him. John watched her take in the man's suffering, consuming it with all of her senses. She wasn't ready to end this, not the way she smelled: dripping fascination and arousal. John drew his gun, and when he heard the man's brain begin to bleed and die, he put a bullet into it. 

As they wrapped up the body, he made a vow to tell her nothing. She was a fire. She would burn through his secrets like oxygen, and when he had nothing left, she would leave him for dead. 

**2013**

The fact that it was Wilson behind the team sent to kill them was enough of a shock that Shaw missed her shot, and in return got clipped by one of Wilson's. 

It only occurred to her once she was clear and breaking into a car, that if Cole had made a real bond with her before he died, it would have to break eventually. She wasn't even sure why she still felt the benefit of that bond, but she wasn't questioning it, not while it kept her moving through the night with senses balanced, able to process data without overloading. If this was what a full bond was like, what the hell were Control's people thinking, keeping all of their Cascade operatives separated?

Shaw had made four bonds since joining the ISA, not counting Hersh, and the one with Cole had been the strongest, even before this fuck-up of a mission. Breaking those bonds had been unpleasant, but not deadly. Hersh showed all of his trainees how to back down from a bond with the fewest consequences. 

Thinking about that now, while she was still reeling from Cole's death, brought back the smell of the classroom in the training centre, the dust from the chalkboard hanging in the air, Hersh's uncomplicated and familiar scent. 

"Push me away," he said, the first time he broke their training bond. "Imagine me getting smaller and smaller through your scope."

Shaw twitched and gave one of the desks a kick. She wouldn't have said she was fond of Hersh; he was a good teacher with a surprisingly droll sense of humour, but that wasn't enough to endear him to Shaw. Yet, now, faced with the fact that she was about to lose their bond, she was suddenly and perplexingly terrified of the loneliness that was sure to follow. It was a horrible, emotional sensation, and totally alien to her. Shaw didn't feel fear, not in this heart-thumping, dry-mouthed way. Not ever. 

"You'll be all right, Shaw," Hersh said. "I've done this a dozen times, and I'm just fine. Now, can you feel the bond between us?" 

Shaw nodded, unwillingly. She'd gotten used to that feeling, of knowing when Hersh was near, of letting him take the load when a training exercise flooded her mind with data. She would never have admitted it to anyone, but the bond was like holding someone's hand, someone you knew you could trust. 

"Good. Push on it, push me away." Hersh had his hands in his pockets; it was reassuring that he really was okay with this, because false neurological signals were telling Shaw that she was about to kill him, that this act was life threatening. 

When the bond went, it hurt like a broken finger: sharp and blinding for a moment, then a dull ache. Hersh was right: it wasn't pleasant, but it was nothing she couldn't take. 

Hersh nodded, apparently unaffected. "Good work. Now, put it back together, and we'll break it again. Every time, it hurts less." 

_Wake up. Imminent threat._

At those words, cool and quiet in her mind, Shaw reached out to punch Cole for being so weirdly procedural, then she remembered what had happened. She snapped out of the reverie and found herself leaning on the wheel of the stolen car, gasping with the pain in her gut. Cole was dead; what the hell was she going to do the next time she zoned like that? How long was this bond going to last? And what would it feel like when it broke? A properly formed bond? That was going to be rough. 

There was movement at the edge of her peripheral vision and she had her gun swinging towards the target, but it was just a corner boy watching her. It reminded her of the suppressant tablets, and for the first time, she itched to take a couple to blank this weirdness and let her think. There was no chance of that, though: they were back in the van, and Wilson would be all over that by now. She gave the corner boy a nod and wound down her window while he strolled over to her. 

A plan was coming together to help her prepare for the familiar edginess building under the high that was Cole's bond. She grabbed the corner boy through the window, hauled him into the car, and drove off. The corner boy led her to an apartment, which Shaw easily secured. Then she threw the laser focus of Cole's bond into fishing bullet fragments from her side. When she had the dressing taped on, and there was nothing else to do, she let herself slide into unconsciousness. 

When she woke, she breathed in the taste of blood and pain – neither of them hers this time – and she jerked alert in her chair. A new wave of dealers had arrived, and they were beating the crap out of Louis, the corner boy. Shaw shifted in her seat, and knew that Cole's bond had already peaked. It left her thrumming with misplaced adrenaline, and she channelled that into dealing with this new threat. Her mouth stung with the tang of hot gunmetal and sulphur, and for the first time ever she craved a couple of red pills to tone it all down. 

She stood alone in the room, now empty and quiet, and tried to settle her thoughts. There were narcotics everywhere, piled in dime bags on the table, caked into the carpet, and while a hit of smack would bring things under control, Shaw could tell this stuff was cut with all kinds of crap. There was cold beer in a cooler, though, so she popped one and flopped onto the filthy sofa beside a dead guy. 

Feeling Cole's bond fade was somehow crueller than watching him die; this was somehow the last thing of him that Shaw would ever have, and there was no way to keep or preserve it. She liked to tell herself that she didn't feel things strongly, nothing more than anger and maybe lust, but right now, she knew there was something squirming back there, something more than rage at the pointlessness of Cole's death or the way that Control's people decided to wipe out their best team for no apparent reason. 

The anxiety built, volcano-like, as Cole's bond went cold and slipped away. Shaw's heart sat somewhere in her throat, beating and beating like it was about to burst. Her breath, still laden with the taste of blood and powdered narcotics, came too fast and too shallow for her to think straight, and her forehead was beaded with perspiration. After an hour, Shaw was so certain that this was going to kill her that the dealer's stash had become appetising in comparison to the way her body was behaving. Then it occurred to her that maybe Cole kept a back up supply of suppressants in his gear bag. She leaned over to rummage through it, touched smooth plastic, and pulled out Cole's thumb drive. Was this what got him killed? What the hell happened with the Aquino case that made him want to dig through classified data? 

She plugged the drive into the dealer's laptop, and found Cole's paper trail, from emails to account statements, all forwarded to a contact in the CIA, Veronica Sinclair. Nothing settled anxiety better for Shaw than having a mission, so she patted down a dead man for his phone, and called the number. 

"Veronica Sinclair? We need to talk." 

By the time she got to the Suffolk Hotel to meet Veronica Sinclair, Shaw's senses were on fire, and her hands shaking. Cole was gone, really gone, and she could barely keep a lid on the rage she felt at the loss of him. She knocked on the door, then stuffed her clenched fists in her pockets to hide the shaking. 

Inside, she heard Veronica walk across the carpet, close the bathroom door, and look through the peephole. Shaw thought for a moment there was someone else in the room, someone frightened and breathing shallowly, and her shoulders tensed up, ready for an ambush. When Veronica opened the door, though, all the extra sensory data fell away. Veronica's face pulled Shaw's attention, and forced her to focus, and it was such a damn relief that she nearly grabbed the woman. 

"Come in," was all Veronica said, so, stunned, Shaw followed her instruction and walked into the room. 

There was a huge pot of orchids on the table, wafting sickly sweet perfume through the room, wiping out traces of anyone else. Even Shaw, who smelled mostly of crack house and blood, couldn't smell herself above that floral onslaught. When she turned to Veronica, though, she somehow caught a trace of the woman's perfume, like a melody breaking through heavy traffic: rose, and the taste of sea spray on skin. Shaw frowned; she shouldn't be able to pick that out of the room, not without a Guide to help her filter, and Cole's bond was completely gone now. 

She watched Veronica more closely, and suddenly it all made sense, why this woman was Cole's contact, why they'd been so keen to share details, why the smell of her hair and the texture of her skin was so fascinating to Shaw. 

"You're a Guide," she said. "I don't know you, when were you recruited?" 

Veronica frowned for a moment, eyes narrow, then shook her head. "That's not why you called me, Shaw. What happened to Mike?"

You don't know what I'm talking about, thought Shaw. And you don't want me to realise. "Cole got killed," she said, finally. "On a mission."

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry. Are you okay?" Veronica reached out and touched Shaw's elbow. "You're really pale." 

She probably wasn't doing it on purpose, but Shaw's senses pulled in hard at the physical contact, until all she could see and hear was Veronica's voice, Veronica's face. What the hell was going on here? Veronica was scary good at getting a Sentinel's focus. 

"I'm fine," she said, shortly. She took off her coat, sat down, angled away from the massive flower arrangement. "What is it you do, Veronica?" How can you do what Cole did, and not know the program? Cole had told her a bit about how he'd been recruited for Project Cascade: he'd enlisted with the Marines, they'd assessed his skillset and his psych report, and sent him off for a set of MRIs. Once they'd seen the right brainwave patterns, and tried him next to an unbonded Sentinel, he'd been put into the project. 

"It was kinda nice, you know?" he'd said once, in a bar in Tunis. "You grow up wanting to be a superhero, and then suddenly someone taps you on the shoulder, tells you that you've got this special ability." 

It had been a cool night, after a day spent under the direct sun, and even Shaw's skin was tight over her shoulder blades. "You had no idea?" she said, and threw back her tequila. 

Cole's face would peel the next day, even though he'd slathered it with pasty white sunscreen this morning. "Nope. No clue I was any different. It's not like you guys, where they have to give your brain a little jolt to activate it. In me, it could have just sat there all my life and I'd never have known the possibilities of working with you." He threw back his drink, and Shaw settled back in her chair, enjoying the second-hand burn of it. 

"Shaw? Hey, are you okay?" Veronica touched Shaw on the cheek, and Shaw was back from the past, rage bubbling up hard at the renewed loss of Cole, and the intrusion of Veronica's presence, the smell of her, the sound of her clothes moving against her body. Now she knew Veronica wasn't a trained Guide: nobody who knew a Sentinel would touch them in the middle of a zone-out. She slapped at Veronica's hand with a snarl. 

"Don't touch me!" she said. "Not ever when I'm in one of those." She drew her gun and showed it to her. "I could have killed you, and not even known." 

"Okay," said Veronica, mildly. "La Boeuf Sur Le Toit," she said, suddenly. "Wait, what does that even mean? The beef on the roof? Why would I say that?" 

Jesus, she got the name and everything? That was some latent ability, right there. "It's a club in Tunis," said Shaw. "I went there with Cole. I was just thinking about it." 

Veronica frowned. "How could you be thinking about it, and I said it?" 

Shaw sighed; whatever this was, she didn't have time to talk a newbie through Guide etiquette and safety, not when she'd never see Veronica again after this. "What did you do for Cole, exactly?" 

Veronica's gaze was narrow-eyed, and Shaw was certain she'd want to talk more about the sensory transfer. Great. 

"I'm an analyst," Veronica said. "Mike asked me to track wire transfers to a nuclear engineer called Daniel Aquino, to trace them to their source. He didn't say what it was about. He never mentioned any sort of project. What did you call it, again?"

"And what did you find?" The orchids were overpowering, especially now that her senses were amped up. And there were those sounds again: the terrified, stifled gasping, the heightened pulse. Shaw had to check it wasn't her own heartbeat she could hear, racing and skipping along. She swiped a hand across her forehead; it came away clammy. Maybe that bullet wound was already septic.

Veronica, of course, was oblivious to the undercurrents in the room. "The records were spoofed. Cole said he'd been told Aquino was being paid by Hezbollah, but when I dug into the metadata, all the transactions were from inside the US." 

"If Aquino wasn't working for Hezbollah, what the hell was he into that got him killed?" Shaw had a rotten feeling inside, one of those feelings that mean she should have listened to Cole, should have trusted his skills and his integrity. Not that it would have made a difference. God, those flowers, they were going to make her gag. 

Veronica crossed her legs. "I was hoping you'd have some idea," she said. "How do you know that Aquino was killed?" 

Shaw couldn't help it; the memory unspooled as easily as if Veronica had pressed the play button on a VCR. She breathed in the hot plastic smell of a car in an outdoor parking lot, the feeling of satisfaction as she crouched, muscles ready, in the back seat of Aquino's mundane little sedan. There was the pop of the door opening, the comfortingly familiar sensation of her finger on the trigger, and Aquino's realisation that he was about to die. It all played in slow motion, so clear and crisp that when Shaw stood, she was surprised to feel carpet under her feet instead of the crunch-slide of gravel. 

"So, they sent you to kill him." Veronica learned fast, and had kept her hands neatly folded over her knee. "What are you? Isn't it dangerous to do that – broadcast all that information for anyone to hear?" 

Shaw leaned against the arm of the sofa. She had a bad urge to pace and that didn't give the impression of stoicism that she thought would be best for this meeting. "It's not a broadcast," she said. "Cole and I were partners; we were on the same frequency. I have no idea why you're picking up on it. Okay, let's work this from the start: who paid Aquino? Did you trace anything to a project called Cascade?" 

"The money came from within the government," said Veronica. "I don't know anything about a Project Cascade, but the funding came from the ISA – it's based out of the Pentagon." Veronica watched Shaw absorb the news. "You know who they are, don't you?" 

Shaw nodded. "Until yesterday, I worked for them." It felt like the city was leaning in on her through the window: traffic, footsteps, voice, rattling pipes and that endless panicked breathing sound. 

"Their budget goes back five years," said Veronica, "Huge amounts coded to a project called Northern Lights." 

Shaw had never heard of it; was it a secondary Sentinel project? Is that why she and Cole were targeted, because Control was clearing the way for a new generation? If only she could concentrate. This was Cole's thing, the strategizing, the analysis. She was the point and shoot girl. And if those pipes didn't stop clattering, she was ready to point and shoot them, damn it. 

"Shaw," said Veronica. "Shaw, I want you to listen to me, this is important." 

As easily as she had the first time she met Cole, Shaw rode the sound of that voice back to a state of calm. "Yeah," she said. "What do you want?" The quiet in her mind was like a cool breeze on her skin. 

"Mike told me Daniel Aquino spoke to you before you eliminated him," she said, as if covert political assassinations were routine to her. "He said Aquino told you the name of his contact. Do you remember who it was? Aquino. You remember Aquino, Shaw." Veronica watched her intently as she said Aquino's name over and over. Shaw wasn't certain, but she thought Veronica was fishing in Shaw's sense memory, scrabbling for details that popped up whenever the name was mentioned. 

Well, two could play at that game. Shaw pulled herself together, locked down her thoughts the way she'd been trained to do in the event that she met a hostile Guide.

Veronica made a noise of protest and pressed fingers to her temple. "Where did it go? How did you do that?" 

"That's a toy I don't think you should be playing with just yet," said Shaw. She stilled her thoughts and let her senses settle. That was more difficult than it should have been; Veronica might be a wild talent, but she had power and resilience to spare. 

Now that Shaw's focus was narrowed down, she could sort the sounds better: the rattling pipes and the panicked breathing were coming through the bathroom door. She stood, took her gun and moved towards the bathroom. "Stay here. And keep away from the windows." 

Veronica watched her, unnaturally calm about this turn of events. Shaw cautiously pushed the door open, saw the woman cuffed in the tub and understood everything. It was still too slow: the woman who was not Veronica pushed the metal tines of a Taser against her neck, and Shaw had a millisecond to smell the voltage building, before her whole body fell rigid to the floor. She was smiling when she fell, though, because not-Veronica was about to discover what happened when you caused pain to a Sentinel who had made contact with you. 

"Aaah!" A few seconds later, Not-Veronica staggered, and fell against the wardrobe, her own muscles twitching and spasming. She slid down the glossy wood panel, until she sat on the carpet, legs akimbo, like a puppet in a toy box. 

Shaw couldn't move, not yet, but she could watch the tremors move down not-Veronica's arms and legs, and that was incredibly satisfying. Now it was a race to see who recovered first. 

"That's amazing!" said not-Veronica after a minute. "How did you do it? We weren't in electrical contact, so how could you transfer the charge to me?" 

Shaw didn't answer. Instead, she funnelled all her strength into getting her arms and legs to move. The rictus grin was a side effect of the Taser, but Shaw thought it delivered a good message. 

Unfortunately, not-Veronica was fit and well-slept, and she hadn't been shot or subjected to emotional shock in the last twenty-four hours, so she recovered first. She hauled Shaw into a chair while Shaw was still shuddering, then got busy with zip ties. 

"Well, that was fun," she said. "But I really need to get to work. Veronica has been less than useful on the topic of Northern Lights, but now I wish I'd known to ask her about Cascade. Is that right, Veronica?" She raised her voice and spoke over her shoulder to the woman in the bath. Shaw leaned forward trying to bite not-Veronica hard on the neck, maybe rip out a major blood vessel, but all that happened was that her lips met the woman's shoulder. Not-Veronica gasped, and so did Shaw, as her mind filled with images and impressions: a great, abstract concept of a thing, watching and listening, ever-present and monolithic. 

"What the hell is that?" said Shaw, her head spinning from the vastness of it. "Is it a Sentinel? Is it here in New York?" It was disorienting to feel familiarity for a thing she'd never seen before. She wasn't sure if she was recognising it, or if it was, implausibly, recognising her. 

"It's so interesting you say that." Not-Veronica leaned tiredly against the wardrobe, vulnerable for the first time since Shaw had entered the hotel room. "That's what Aquino was working on," she said. "It's called Northern Lights."  


Shaw glared at her, as the muscle tremors settled. "I told you, I don't know anything about Northern Lights."  


"Where did you think your Research gets its information from?" asked not-Veronica. She tested the zip ties, making sure that they were secure. "I don't know how, but I've seen inside your head, Shaw. You're too smart to just believe what you're told."  


Shaw felt the woman's mind experimentally press against hers, but the move was clumsy and easy to rebuff. Natural talent doesn't get you everything, bitch, she wanted to say, but she wasn't sure her voice would be steady enough to give her words the gravitas they needed. Instead, she shoved back, hard enough that Cole would have retched, maybe blown a blood vessel in his eye. Not that she had to do that to Cole. Very often. God, the absence of him hurt, and the way he knew her like nobody else. 

Not-Veronica absorbed the attack with a sharp inhalation, and a flush around her collarbones. When she stepped close to Shaw again, Shaw tasted a different kind of salt with the rose. Oh, woman, you are wired all wrong, she thought. It was something she knew from personal experience. 

Not-Veronica traced a finger over her own lip, thoughtfully. "That was something, wasn't it? Now, where was I? Oh!" With that happy exclamation, as if she were unwrapping a birthday present, not-Veronica unbuttoned Shaw's shirt, and pushed it down her shoulders. 

"We're going to have a little chat now, Shaw. I have a little knack for knowing when someone is keeping things from me, and it's really, really important that you tell me everything you know about Daniel Aquino." 

She crouched in front of Shaw with her elbows resting on Shaw's thighs. Shaw's nerves were still jumping and twitching, but that didn't stop her noticing the different shades in not-Veronica's hair, or the fineness of her bones. Ugh, this was so wrong; a natural talent Guide hyping up her senses, and, yeah, her libido. Cole would laugh until he puked, if he saw her now. She could almost see him standing behind not-Veronica, shaking his head in that rueful way he had whenever Shaw got back from screwing someone's brains out. She raised her eyebrows at him, daring him to say something, when she remembered he was dead. Cold and blue and dead under her hands. 

"Hey!" said not-Veronica, though she'd learned by now not to make contact with Shaw when she zoned out. Instead, she waved her fingers near Shaw's face. She'd had a French polish recently, Shaw thought, woozily. Then they made eye contact, and Shaw's focus contracted and sharpened. 

"This is so strange and interesting," said not-Veronica. "But I really need to know: Aquino was hired to build a home for something very special, something I want to find. So we need to get to work." She smoothed her fingers along Shaw's collarbone, and Shaw's skin tingled, raising goose bumps all over her shoulders and arms. "This wonderful something needed a place, so that it could gather up intelligence for people like you. It soaks up information like a sponge and filters it all down to find a single grain of sand. Somewhere in there, you have to know something about it." 

That did sound familiar, in a way, to the way that Sentinels and Guides worked, thought Shaw. There wasn't time to process this information, though, because Not-Veronica was reaching for the steam iron on the counter. She watched not-Veronica lift up the steam iron, and test the surface of it, hissing and shaking her fingers where she brushed it. Shaw felt the same hot sizzle on her fingertips. 

This time, Shaw laughed out loud, even though the Taser had reduced her to a weak wheeze. She pressed mental fingers into the woman's mind, strengthening the connection between them so that they could share sensations. "If you thought the Taser felt good, you're going to love this," she said. "Have fun with the sensory backwash of a third degree burn." 

Not-Veronica's expression of curiosity and apprehension was extremely heartening. She must have been desperate, though, because she lowered the iron towards Shaw's skin. Shaw watched her pupils dilate as she received data from Shaw: anticipation, fear, a little arousal because that's how Shaw was wired, and the warm halo of heat emanating from the iron. Then an alarm went off, and they both jumped. 

"Oh, that's disappointing," said Not-Veronica. "But unfortunately, we're out of time. Wilson and his people started searching for Veronica a few hours ago, and they've finally made it to this floor. So I guess we'll have to catch up on this very interesting conversation later." 

She touched her lips to the top of Shaw's head, and the two of them gasped as sensation flew from one to the other. 

"Ooh," said Not-Veronica with a shiver. "I can't wait." 

She slipped through the adjoining door into the next suite just as Wilson's men came in. They were so low in the pecking order that Shaw barely knew them. Just a shade above hired thugs, but they knew what to do when they found Shaw restrained. The boss, though, didn't know better than to holster his gun in his waistband. Shaw felt along the zip-tie with her fingertips until she found a weak point invisible to anyone without Sentinel abilities, then snapped it. She took great pleasure in grabbing the goon's gun and shooting him somewhere in the vicinity of his groin. She cleared the room, all except for this one guy in the corner – why was this a theme with her lately? – and, just like last night, he went down to a mystery shooter.

It was the guy from the corner yesterday morning and then in Mercer's apartment, the one in the good wool coat. Again, he held his gun loosely and not pointed at her. Still, Shaw wanted to leap out of the chair and choke him, which didn't make a whole lot of sense, even if she could get free from the chair. She bared her teeth at him and started to raise the gun again. 

"Can you do me a favour?" the man said. "Can you not shoot me this time?" 

There was a weird smell in the air, and she tilted her head, trying to track it down: chemical and sweet, like incense, with the visual memory cues of richly coloured manuscripts in reds and blues. Aconitine, monkshood poison: a standard tool in the ISA's assassination kit. 

The man did the same thing – that flare of the nostrils, the angle of the head when you're following a scent trail. 

"You're Cascade," she said. That would explain why she wanted to open his throat. Territoriality was why they had to do most of their training solo. Shaw had a bigger problem, though: the man's gaze sat just behind her, which meant the big goon had dropped the syringe out of her sight. Right now, with a trained Sentinel sharing her space, Shaw very much wanted to know where that aconitine had gone in the melee. She twisted from side to side, trying to catch a glimpse of it. 

"It's there," said the man, and pointed behind her. She chanced another quick flick of her eyes and saw the damn thing stuck in her shoulder blade. Damn. 

The man took a step forward and she brought up the gun on instinct to ward him off. 

"It's okay, Shaw," he said, backing off. "We can take this slow. You want me to get it? I think it would be better than risk giving yourself the whole dose. My name's John, by the way. I don't know if you remember from Mercer's place. You had a lot to deal with there." 

The smell of the stuff was making her queasy, and worried that some of the dose had been delivered. She didn't have any atropine, and she doubted that the big lug on the floor bothered to bring some. 

"How long were you with the program?" she said. "Are you still active?" Talking helped develop familiarity, and familiarity offset the instinctive territoriality of Sentinel behaviour. It was a pain, because Shaw didn't like people at the best of times and her social skills left a lot to be desired, but it was necessary to build enough trust for this guy John to help her out. 

He lifted one foot in preparation to step forward, but stopped there, waiting for permission. Shaw gave him a tiny nod, and he stepped closer. 

"I'm second gen," he said. "I've been out for a while." He took another small step forward, and waited with patience Shaw wasn't certain she would have. 

Her shoulders were starting to ache with the unnatural posture she was holding. "I heard you guys all died," she said. 

"Not all of us." John was less than a foot away from her now. "Though we mostly took an unexpected retirement." He holstered his piece, and let his arms fall to his sides. 

"Ha!" Shaw said, bitterly. "I can believe that." He was close enough to touch her, but knew better than to do anything about that. 

"How are you doing?" asked John. "Can I –" he gestured towards her. 

Shaw swallowed and wished Cole was there, for selfish reasons this time, because her senses were jangling and she did not want someone's hands on her right now. But the syringe was like a line of fire in her trapezius muscle, and the smell of aconitine was so strong she could taste it now: resin and smoke and wine. 

She nodded tersely. "But go slow." It was a warning: fast movement from another Sentinel in close proximity could set off a fight or flight response – Shaw always chose fight – and that would only end with the depressor of the syringe shooting liquid death into her body. 

"Here we go," said John, nice and low, moving gently with his palms open. "Try not to move; I don't want to bump it." 

Shaw braced herself. "You're not going to bump it," she said. "Cascade's too good for that."

His fingertips were warm. He kept his weapons well; she could smell the gun oil on him, only a night old. He had a dog, and he fed that dog from his breakfast plate. Shaw still wanted to kill him, but it was a weird, instinctive command, and she found it quieted when they had an actual conversation. 

"You'll get a disease," she said. 

He pressed down at the point where the needle sat in her skin. "From you? I don't think so." She glanced up at him, and saw the set of his jaw and his clammy skin. This was hard for him, too, but it was workable. 

The needle was sliding out of the muscle. Shaw could feel it hit every muscle fibre and drag against her skin. "Not from me, bozo, from feeding the dog with your fingers." 

He laughed, a sharp puff of air she felt on the back of her neck, then the sharp point of the needle was out and safe. 

"I do occasionally wash my hands," he said. He reached for the cap for the syringe and slipped it back on. "I have a friend who wants to meet you." 

There was an odd tone to his voice when he said that, and she glared at him, suspicious. "Why would I want to meet your friend?" 

"Do you have anything else on for the day?" He tapped the zip tie on her other wrist, and showed her the hilt of his knife. 

She shook her head. "No, my schedule is pretty clear." She pointed with her chin at the zip tie and he cut through it. 

There was a second of hesitation once she was free: that moment before a dogfight bursts into action. Shaw felt the muscles in her back tense, but somehow John was able to keep his own responses in check, and it all came to nothing. 

She pushed herself upright, and John backed right out of her space, which was childishly gratifying but Shaw took it. She'd had a worse day than him, even if she had tried to kill him. 

As she followed him from the room, she stamped hard on the barrel of the syringe and it cracked open. The incense-wine-smoke of the aconitine completely obliterated not-Veronica's rose and sea-spray perfume.


	6. Chapter 6

**2011**

It happened when John was trying to choke the man, this annoying, buttoned-up psychopath who had used his money and influence to kidnap John and set up his kinky little game with murder tapes and zip ties. John moved faster than this Finch could focus, got his forearm jammed under the guy's chin and lifted hard, got his feet a few inches off the ground. He paused when he heard bones creaking in a way that was not right. In that moment his bare wrist made contact with the skin of Finch's throat and the room fell silent. 

He let Finch slide down so his feet were on the ground but still held him in place against the wall. John's rage was fading, despite the fresh blood dripping from his palm, despite the ground-glass pain in his chest from hearing Jessica's name. 'Your friend,' Finch had said, that patronising, slick term rich people used when they meant 'person we'd rather not acknowledge you're having sex with'. 

The silence in his head was a relief, as it had been the first time he met Mark, but without the claustrophobic pressure that Mark always induced in him. John's rage folded in on itself like a paper boat, smaller and smaller until it dissipated, and even then he didn't realise that this was coming from Finch. His breath levelled out and the perspiration chilled on his skin, and all the while, this man let John press an arm against his throat without panic, kept eye contact with him, _worried_ about him. 

John let him go, and reeled, falling into a chair, his hand palm up on his knee. He watched the blood welling from the slash, trying to understand what was happening. The pain kept demanding attention, and he kept ignoring it.

Finch, loosening his collar and straightening his tie, glanced over John's shoulder at the wound and made a _tch_ with his tongue, then went to the bathroom for towels. 

"Here," he said, offering him a hand towel that was bigger and more plush than the one John been using in the shower at the flophouse. "Keep the pressure on it; it doesn't appear too deep." He was, John noted, careful to prevent skin contact this time, and now John understood why. 

"You're a Guide," John said. He flopped back in the chair, his fist closed around the towel. This should be where his survival instincts kicked in, where he ran from this room and this man, back to the street and the subway and the bottle. Instead, he felt a great fatigue and hopelessness. 

Finch sat opposite him, slowly and with a rigid back that spoke of old injuries. "I had hoped we'd have a bit more time to get to know each other before this came up, but yes. I realised some time ago that I had the potential, and now, apparently, more than just potential." 

John eyed him. There was nothing military about this man. He was not a killer; he certainly wasn't physically capable of working missions. "You're not government," he said, finally. 

"No, I am not," said Finch with a grim expression. 

"Cascade?" said John, experimentally, to see if it garnered a response. "Part of the research unit?" He got nothing. Everything about Finch was restrained. John could usually tell just from skin chemistry when someone was afraid or over-confident or trying to conceal their reactions. Finch was oddly blank to him. Even Mark, with all his barriers raised, could still be read a little. 

Finch shook his head in response to John's questions. "I know what Project Cascade entails, and no, I'm not involved." He thought for a moment, and this time there were emotional cues to track, except that instead of directly reading the man, John had the feeling he had been permitted to peek inside the window of a great clockwork engine. 

"I suppose you could say I was a concerned third party," Finch said. Then he smiled, clearly pleased with the phrasing, though John couldn't tell why. "I'd like to work with you, if you would be interested." 

John eyed him warily. "What kind of work?" he said. There was no chance he was tying himself to a Guide again. He'd throw himself off a bridge before he became someone else's attack dog.

"As I explained previously, Mr Reese, I receive intelligence about people in trouble. People the government would deem irrelevant." He stood, took a few deliberate, rocking steps across the room. John heard again the pull and slide of tendons moving over misplaced bone, and this time, he was sure Finch was letting him pick up on the amount of pain he felt in movement. "Unfortunately, I lack the physical capability to act on that knowledge." 

In the end, John took him up on the offer, if only because it was dangerous, and he seemed to have less to lose than Finch did. Though he promised himself that night, bandaging his hand in the flophouse, that if Finch tried to impose himself as John's Guide, if he stepped one foot over that line, John would walk. That walk would probably take him to the nearest bridge and over the edge, but that was something he would face when the time came. 

The time never came: Finch was scrupulous in corralling his abilities, respected John's stated boundaries, and apart from commenting on the extent of John's occasional injuries and whether they could have been prevented, or his preference for avoiding lethal violence, he allowed John to carry out missions any way he preferred. 

As it happened, the irrelevant numbers were diverting and surprisingly challenging, considering the nature of their opponents. Operating without a Guide wasn't easy, but it was better than he expected, though John doubted it made him a very nice person to be around. It hadn't with the CIA on the few occasions he'd had to go without a Guide before, when a mission went awry and separated him from Mark. He and Kara learned some tricks to get through: booze, sex, pain or working out. Now that he was active again, he'd given the bottle away, and, sweating old booze from his pores, he'd never felt less like sex. Pain was a good option in a pinch: he constantly carried a few bruises and cuts from a sharp pinch or a quick slash with his knife. Exercise was best, though. He'd lost a lot of condition living rough, and getting himself back to an operational level essentially took care of any sensory overload. Add to that the fact that things were always a little easier in New York, and he managed well enough in the first week, and better in each week that passed. 

The other thing that helped, unexpectedly, was stalking Finch around the city. Maybe it was the challenge of it. John had only had one Guide before, but in comparison to Mark, Finch had a frightening level of control over the emotions he allowed John to detect. He never once made any offer of Cascade-type support, even on the mornings when John showed up haggard after a night of willing his own mind into quiet without the anaesthetic of booze. 

A Guide would have offset all this, but the cost was too much for John to consider. Still, the lack of sleep, the early mornings, and the gradual detoxing from months of solid drinking left him with a short fuse. He never knew if his overloaded senses troubled Finch, or if he experienced any discomfort when John had to pace or disappear deeper into the library to prowl in the dark and the quiet, because Finch was virtually unreadable. John had never got much from Mark - presumably being a Guide made it easier to mask your emotional and physical responses - but Finch was somehow able to turn this on and off at will. Or stranger still, bring the strength of it up and down like volume. John had never seen anything like it.

Still, it did explain the eerie way Finch could just disappear from John's extended senses in the time it took John to round a corner. John didn't know why this was so fascinating to him, or what he hoped to achieve by tracking Finch to the place where he slept, apart from sending a message to someone who technically had power over John's mind. He had no idea what would happen should he actually manage to find Finch's home, but the chase kept him occupied between numbers. It was good to have a hobby, he reasoned. When things got too much and he overloaded, having something he enjoyed kept him away from the bottle. 

Eventually, when they'd worked seven or eight numbers together, John found Finch waiting for him at the top of the subway entrance John knew he most regularly used. John stared; Finch wore chinos and a pale tweedy sports jacket. Granted, they were well-pressed chinos, and the jacket was certainly expensive, but still, it was a level of dressed down that John couldn't imagine Finch embracing.

"Something bothering you, Mr Reese?" Finch asked. He carried a battered messenger bag on his shoulder. Under the jacket he wore a t-shirt. John was surprised that Finch even owned a t-shirt, or indeed, anything in stretch fabric, but on top of that, this t-shirt was orange. Faded orange. 

Finch followed his gaze to the soft collar of the t-shirt, which was faded and frayed. It didn't scream 'authentically faked vintage' so much as 'I've owned this for thirty years and it still fits.'

"It's my lucky t-shirt," he said, with no further explanation. "About this stalking situation: do you think we've established our relative abilities to a degree of satisfaction? It does seem like a needless expenditure of energy, constantly chasing me around the city." His voice was all John had to judge his mood, a kind of sense-blindness he could only barely remember from before Project Cascade. This, and Finch's choice of clothing left John itching with curiosity. It was weirdly exhilarating. 

"Well, you would say that, if I were getting close to catching you," said John. He felt oddly effervescent, leaning against the rail in the mild spring sunshine. He'd slept well, all things Cascade considered, and when he ran in the park this morning, his body had responded, strong and capable. And now, Finch had presented him with a mystery. 

Finch's expression was sceptical, but amused. "I am sorry to shatter your expectations about my place of residence, but I've made reservations here," he said, indicating a restaurant a little further down the block. "Though I do promise that should you come knocking on my door some late night, I'll certainly welcome the company. For now, would you like to have lunch? We have a new number to discuss." 

It was as they both walked towards the restaurant that John realised what he had been doing with Finch, why he felt buoyant and ridiculous. Somehow in the last few weeks, his plan to track Finch and hold knowledge over him like a weapon had transmuted into a game. He'd been playing with Finch, and Finch, eternally polite, played along. And just then, John was fairly sure, Finch had both made a gentle pass at him and told John he was single all in the same sentence. 

The maître d' recognised Finch as Mr Crane, despite the chinos. His state of dress was obviously no issue, as they were seated with the quiet efficiency shown only to extremely wealthy patrons. 

Over an elegant lunch of many small courses, Finch passed John documents and photographs, explained the new number and talked about potential threats to and by the man in question. John took each sheet of paper, nodded and agreed, but instead he was watching Finch's body language: his posture, the way he ate, the little movements of his mouth and eyebrows. Flirting and sex, physical intimacy, all those things were driven by pheromones and John was suddenly learning that he'd come to rely on Sentinel abilities to manage them. Finch, if he experienced those things at all, kept them supressed or hidden from John. John wasn't sure if he wanted to know, but the fact that the knowledge was being kept from him was frustrating. He watched Finch's hands moving papers as he spoke, and he wondered why his mind was wandering like this. 

"This tournament is likely to have media coverage, though it will mostly be press or online. There's occasionally a big network present at the finals for the novelty value, but hopefully we'll have this number completely resolved before then. Mr Reese?" Finch tapped his finger on the linen tablecloth to catch John's attention. "Are you all right? Have you… gone somewhere else? I believe the term you use is 'zoned'?"

John blinked and shook his head. "No, I'm fine," he said, and tried to catch up on the conversation. "I'm going to a tournament? Tennis? Golf?" His face fell when Finch shook his head. "Chess?" He hoped not. It wasn't his game. 

"Tetris," said Finch. "Our number was last year's national champion. And you won't be playing, unless there are some significant gaps in your CIA file that you've neglected to fill me in on." 

"What's my cover, then?" John was confused. They had tournaments for video games? What was John supposed to do at one of those? 

Finch undid his jacket, so that John could see his t-shirt. The faded Atari logo was still visible, though the printing was now cracked and mazed. "You'll be my bodyguard," he said. "I assure you, you won't stand out at all. The tournaments are quite blood-thirsty."

"I thought you were a very private person," said John, baffled. "Won't this expose you?" 

"Harold Drake is a reputable contestant in national titles," said Finch. He pulled a pair of aviator glasses from his pocket, foiled with orange, to match the t-shirt. "He's known to be publicity shy and often skips the presentations, but he's won three years out ten." 

John's grin could not be contained. He was going to enjoy saving this number. 

**2013**

The journey to John's friend was only a couple of blocks, but without a Guide or suppressants, for Shaw it was a rattling experience. A steampipe under the sidewalk hissed noisily to itself, slowly forcing a crack wider. John spared it no more than a glance and a text on his phone, and he swept on. He dealt easily with the blaring taxis, the milling pigeons (Shaw knew which ones crawled with lice, and which had been improbably used to transport drugs), and muttering crowds. An ambulance screamed past on the other side of the road, and the power of the sound pushed viscerally at Shaw's body, until John turned to stand in the way of the soundwaves, blocking and breaking their movement with his back until it passed them both in a falling wail of Doppler shift. 

"How are you doing this without losing your mind?" she said, under her breath, knowing he would hear. She stared at him; the stark black and white of his suit and shirt were an oasis amidst the flashing lights. 

For a second, John's smile was unexpectedly open, then he tapped his earpiece. "My other half," he said. "Come on." 

By the time they reached their destination, John had helped Shaw navigate a world only she and he could sense: he crossed the street to avoid an elite hair salon that pumped music so loud it existed on the visual spectrum, quivering beams of neon light. Then he stopped still at a corner and shook his head before grabbing a hot dog vendor by the collar and physically shaking him. 

"I told you not to buy from those crooks – dump this and go home now before the city closes you down. Or you kill someone."

Shaw wrinkled her nose at the river water tang coming off those hot dogs and ran a little faster to keep up with John's long stride. "What are you? Like, the hot dog police?" 

He smiled, a nasty smile this time, one that Shaw could get on board with. "I am for that guy," he said. "Come on, this way." 

The building that he brought her to was unexceptional: clean enough, partially under construction, and reasonably empty. They went up in the elevator, which, to Shaw's senses was incredibly clean. Beside her, John's breathing had settled completely, and his shoulders were relaxed. His calm body language passed instinctively to her, which irked her enough to reach out to poke him, but then the elevator jerked to a halt. 

The doors opened, and Shaw stepped into stillness so complete, her senses were left ringing with the bluster of the city. The room was dim, and looked down on a cityscape that no longer threatened to overwhelm her. 

The source of the stillness was obvious, because all of the emotional movement in the room was between him and John, like two pebbles thrown in a stream. Shaw walked through the ripples as the connection between the two men mingled and bounced back. It was like nothing Shaw had ever seen, not the whole time she had been in Project Cascade. 

The man by the window was well-dressed and owlish, and from him emanated a impenetrable, organic calm, creating quiet the way a wooden floor absorbed sound or fog softened the strength of colours. He turned from the cityscape to watch her as she approached.

"Ms Shaw," the man said. He honest-to-God steepled his fingers, like a damn mad scientist or something, and that wasn't even the weirdest thing about him. "You can call me Harold. Is this level of protection adequate for you? To go any deeper, I'd have to intrude a little, and I think that's something we'd both rather avoid, at least until we're more familiar."

"It's fine," said Shaw, though she was desperately curious to know more about how he could control the degree of suppression. Cole had one level and that was it: an on and off switch, and while that worked fine, knowing there might have been a way to have finer control, to sense the things she wanted to know without being overwhelmed by the background stuff, was… she wanted to say frustrating, but she meant heartbreaking. 

She got nothing from Harold: no scent trace, no mnemonic triggers, no sense of what he ate for breakfast, who he kissed. She only knew he had a dog because she saw some hairs on the leg of his trousers. Same dog as John, she'd be willing to bet, though she had no sensory data to back this up. 

"You're his Guide," she said, though it didn't need to be stated; the connection between them was so intense she was surprised she couldn't see it physically. "How is your bond so strong?" This is something Cole would have loved, she thought, with a bitter pang. 

"Ah," he said. "Well, it's something we learned along the way, I suppose. Project Cascade doesn't exactly encourage the strongest of bonds. I believe that there has always been this potential link between those who are super processors, such as myself and your friend, Mr Cole, and those who are hyper-sensory, like you and John. I think when those relationships are left to grow naturally, not tampered with or forced, that the bonds that we form are healthier. And by extension, stronger." 

"Who are you? You sure know a lot about Project Cascade, for someone who supposedly isn't part of it." Shaw wondered if he was an early instructor, someone who managed to leave the project without the usual retirement package. 

Harold's expression was more readable now: a little wry, a little regretful. "I had a project of my own that, for a short time, was on an path aligned with Cascade. Not a project with human subjects," he added quickly. "Something quite different. I didn't realise at the time that I had the abilities of a Guide. That came later. Although, I do wonder if the way our projects intersected was in some way influenced by my abilities." 

At the elevator, John was leaning a little forward, and Shaw had the impression that this was news to him, too. You'll be talking about this later, she thought. 

"Are there many of you out there? Untrained Guides, I mean? Because I've already come across one today, and yeah, she was enough trouble all by herself." 

Surprised, Harold met John's gaze over her shoulder, his eyebrows raised. 

"Root," John said. "She posed as Veronica Sinclair." 

Harold's voice went up half an octave. "Root? Miss Groves is a Guide? That is… That is unacceptable!" However his ability worked to create quiet in the mind of a Sentinel, emotional shock cracked a hole in it. Shaw started to feel the city press in on her senses: a siren wailed past, the ever-present garbage smell wafted up on a cloud of steam. All the while, Harold's expression of horror was almost comical. 

Shaw would have laughed at his outrage, if she wasn't so exhausted, and if this peace wasn't such a balm. "What's her deal, anyway? She's got some interesting tastes." 

"Oh, unfortunately, I'm well acquainted with Miss Groves' preferences," Harold said, sourly. "John and I both are." 

"You said you thought that programming abilities lay parallel with Guides," John said, with more calm than Shaw would have, if this was her Guide freaking out. "Root has plenty of talent in that sphere." 

Harold's mouth pursed and he noticeably struggled to get his control back, but the presence of all those people on the other side of the glass retreated, first to a whisper, and then to nothing. Shaw had no sensation that he was corralling the data in her mind, nothing like a Guide who had any sort of bond, but apparently he didn't have to be her Guide to tell her mind to not see the sensory triggers. He raised his eyebrows at her, to ask if she was comfortable. 

"Why do you do this?" Shaw asked. "You and John, why are you involved in this?" 

"We help people," Harold said. "John is a Sentinel; it's right there in the name. We watch and we protect people who don't realise they're in danger. Quite often, we're the only people who can save them."

Shaw couldn't understand it. "Why me?" 

"I'm not entirely certain myself," said Harold. "Whatever the reason, I doubt that it's coincidental that we were called to assist another member of Project Cascade." 

"Called by who?" 

Harold gazed out into the city. "I'm sure Ms Groves has told you, or dropped hints, that the ISA acquired intelligence from a source you know as Research. Your agency operates on two fundamental principles: that Research is never wrong, and that all Research will give you is a number." 

"You should be careful; you know enough to get you killed," said Shaw. She should have been edgy and paranoid; this guy knew too much about the ISA and Research for her to feel as safe as she did right now. She set her jaw and told herself to act like the agent she was. "How do I know this isn't some kind of trap?" 

Harold gave a wry smile. "Honestly, I wouldn't put great odds on John being able to lie to someone like you, Ms Shaw. Or vice versa, to be completely fair. That's one thing about Cascade that you would have to agree on." 

Shaw looked back at John, and he gave a shrug. 

"Okay, that's true. It doesn't explain how our paths ended up crossing." 

Harold opened his notebook and gave her a page, with two social security numbers written on. One was familiar. 

"That's mine," she said. 

Harold nodded. "And Mr Cole's – we were unable to save him, for which I'm sorry. We didn't understand the nature of your situation in time. But we understand now, and we want to help, both of us. If you need protection, medical assistance, or relief from the sensory overload, I am willing to offer anything you need. John has been outside the program for a long time; I know he has resources that could assist in your transition." 

Shaw thought about it for a moment, she really did. Whatever John and Harold had going for them, what they'd learned about bonding and Guides could mean a whole new life for her, one that she didn't think was possible. Then she remembered Cole, dying right in front of her, never having reached the full potential that the two of them were capable of, and she made her decision. 

"Thanks," she said, as sincerely as she could convey. "But no thanks. This isn't about my wellbeing; this is about making sure they know what they've done. I need to see this through."

Harold nodded, and stepped back. "If I could offer some assistance? At least to see you through the next day?" He glanced at John for confirmation, and smiled. 

Shaw turned from him to John, and caught John's encouraging nod. They obviously didn't need to talk much. They were easy in each other's company, and so completely a team. She wanted this for her and Cole, intensely, and the feeling of lost opportunity made her grief hot and angry. She set her jaw and nodded shortly in Harold's direction. Even if this meant he knew how she felt, if it was anything like what Cole had been able to do for her at Mercer's place, it would be worth it to take down Control and make sure they understood just how badly they fucked up. 

"Very well," said Harold. "Before I begin, I should tell you – you maybe have begun to realise this already – the medical suppressants used in Project Cascade are harmful. The reasons for using them are to keep you dependant on your keepers for control and sedation. If you've managed to retain any, I strongly suggest you refrain from taking them ever again." 

She fucking knew it. Those assholes had been hobbling them the whole time. "That's all very well, as long as I never have to take a flight or go to a large city again." Not that she had a lot invested in surviving this encounter with Wilson and his boss. She was realistic. 

"Try pot," said John, from across the room. "It does the same thing, without messing up your senses. Don't smoke it, though. Eat it." 

She stared at him, this well-dressed man in a bespoke suit advocating the use of cannabis. 

"It's legal. Ish" he said, mock-defensive. "Harold makes brownies." 

Harold was abashed. "It's an old college recipe," he said. "It does help, actually, without any of the dampening effects of the suppressants." 

"Great," said Shaw. "I'll get myself a bag of hash cookies as soon as possible." 

Harold took a step closer and extended a hand. "I can do this without physical contact, if you'd prefer. If it's something you can tolerate, though, I do believe it gives a longer effect." 

Shaw took her own step forward, which brought them close enough to dance. "I'm okay with it," she said. "I've already been tased today, I'm sure it won't be as intrusive." 

"I should hope not," said Harold, appalled. He took her hand in his, and folded her fingers into his palm. His skin was cool against hers, and she could feel callouses. He must work with computers, she thought, picturing those hands moving over a keyboard. Or a piano, she added, though she didn't know why. When he pressed his palm to her forehead, she realised where that thought had come from: inside her mind, Harold moved like a fall of musical notes. It was an odd, alien sensation, but nothing that challenged her or forced her to react. The difference between what Cole did and what Harold could do was immediately obvious: Cole received information while Harold actively sought it out. Cole could settle her senses down and make the loud noises tolerable, but Harold could make them calm without making them dulled. The sounds were still there but they didn't bewilder or make her panic. 

"Ah, but I can see your Mr Cole was an excellent operator," said Harold, inside her mind. "Were the two of you not hampered by the effects of the sedatives, you both could have become very adept." Harold had no visual presence – as far as Shaw could tell, he simply stood in front of her, holding her hand and gazing away into the distance – but it was as if a phrase of music drifted in and out of her memories, with that tip-of-the-tongue sensation that came from trying to remember things. A sweet, wooden percussive tone, she thought, and tried to recall the sort of instrument that sounded like that, and why it was familiar to her. 

Harold immediately, maybe instinctively, found the image she was seeking: a series of wooden bars on a standing frame, and a very serious man using mallets to elicit sounds from them. In the memory, the man was unrealistically tall, and Shaw remembered she'd been very small, sitting cross-legged in the gym at her elementary school while a group of visiting musicians taught them about their instruments. She turned her head in the memory from side to side, the visualisation was very real. These sneakers had been her favourites, with flames running up the sides. Her pigtails were too tight; her mother always did them too tight. And the man played soft, melodic sounds with his felt-covered beaters on bars of wood that gleamed in dusty rays of light. 

"It's a xylophone," said Harold, as he eased her out of the memory so gently that she felt nothing but a fleeting nostalgia for times when tight pigtails were the worst she had to face. "A lovely instrument; thank you for such a flattering association." 

He was out of her mind completely now, and Shaw blinked herself back into the darkened room. Harold had stepped back, but he held her hand until she was ready to break the contact, which, she was surprised to find, was a lot longer than she expected. When she was finally ready, she let go and stepped away. 

"For what it's worth," said Harold, and passed her a card with a phone number. 

Shaw held the card and all the safety and entanglement it promised, considered it briefly and gave it back. "Thanks," she said again. "I mean it. But I have to get this done." She passed the card back to him, but not before she brushed the linen of the cold pressed paper under her fingertips, and the cool embossing of the name. He'd chosen that card specifically to be texturally pleasing to – what did he call them? – hypersensory. It was an odd idea, a world where things were tailored to her needs, rather than pressing her into a shape where she fit, but poorly, into someone else's world. 

She turned away from him, and walked towards the elevator. John pressed the button for her, and in the seconds before the door opened, she looked up at him. His face was a little clammy, and his shoulders tense. This time, she wasn't sure that was from the proximity of another Sentinel.

"You all right?" she said. She knew how much he'd shared with her, and how generous he'd been to someone who had actually tried to kill him in the last twenty-four hours. 

He gave a tiny nod. "Thank you," he said. 

"Shouldn't I be thanking you?" she said. "He's your Guide." 

"For being careful," John said. "You didn't have to be." 

Damn, Shaw didn't want this stuff out on show, not when she barely knew what she was feeling herself. "Whatever," she said with a shrug. "We probably need to make a Sentinel book of etiquette or something." 

John made that huffing noise, the one she knew just from their short time together was a pleased laugh. "Just so you can throw it out the window?"

"Pretty much." She stepped into the elevator and took in the two of them for the last time. 

"Watch your back," he said, because it was what you said, even when you know the other person probably wasn't coming back. Shaw was surprised at how much it was like a platoon mate speaking. 

"Yeah," she said, her chin stuck out, defiant. She couldn't quite refute the unspoken offer he was making her, and as usual, emotional response made her want to punch him. 

John didn't react to the aggressive body language, nor did he try to talk her out of it. He simply accepted and understood. He'd be doing the same thing, given the same circumstances. 

As the door closed, she watched him walk across the room, and bend to rest his forehead against Harold's, a quiet moment of union. 

"Yeah," she said aloud. "You'd do the same. Or more: you'd burn the whole city down."


	7. Chapter 7

**2012**

Even though Harold was no longer employed by IFT, John found himself at the plaza at odd times, usually if he was feeling rattled, or a number had been particularly overwhelming. This was a disturbing realisation that he made one autumn morning, as he made his way towards IFT Plaza after his run. As usual after a difficult number, John's skin was crawling and his vision was over-sharpened, so that every tiny moving thing caught his eye and made him reach for his weapon. 

He pushed harder, thumping down the sidewalk and dodging the early pedestrians, forcing his eyes forward and keeping his elbows at his sides. In the CIA, he'd have turned to his Guide to settle this edginess, and, since his Guide had been Mark, the solution would have been to tamp his senses down to uncomfortable dullness, or fuck like maniacs. Or both. After Mark and before Harold, John would have picked up a bottle and settled on the subway to blast his mind into oblivion. Now, for some reason that he could not identify, he sought the grey stones and black glass of the building that housed the tech company Harold secretly owned. 

John didn't think it was to do with Harold himself. He liked Harold, trusted him, even, but they spent plenty of time in each other's company. Stalking Harold's old workplace didn't make sense if all he wanted was to be close to Harold; he already had that. It was just a weird and compulsive thing that helped John cope without a Guide, and so he kept doing it. 

His feet hit the flagstones of IFT Plaza and the immediate watchfulness settled. The central square had a sunken area lined with low benches, probably treasured by skateboarders from all over the city. In it, a curved bronze sculpture carved like an arched branch offered a little shade and presumably cultural enrichment to the cubicle monkeys who lunched there each weekday. In the early morning it was just John, a security guard and the pigeons. 

He stepped up and down on one of the benches, keeping one eye on the guard. John knew his routine by now, so when the guard had turned the south facing corner and was out of sight, John swung up onto the metal arch to do chin-ups. The bronze was cool under his sweating palms, and the rough bark-like texture gave him a good grip. It was perfect. 

“You don’t have to wait for Mr Bahari to move away. The sculpture was meant to be climbed.” Harold’s voice came from behind him. John showily hung by one arm as he reversed his position, hanging the opposite way so he could see Harold's face.

Harold went awkwardly down the few steps one at a time, watching the ground ahead carefully. 

“Maybe you should have had this plaza built with a little more accessibility?" John said, helpfully.

Harold favoured him with a raised eyebrow. “Perhaps accessibility wasn’t a priority at the time, Mr Reese.” He had a folded newspaper under his arm. “In any case, what would the skaters do? This is a known hotspot for grinds and slides.” He sat on one of the benches and unfolded his paper. 

John restarted his count on the chin-ups, and meanwhile, let his senses roll out lazily in Harold’s direction: Harold had showered less than an hour ago, dressed in a room with an open fire, though his suit had not been kept in that room. His shoes were good leather, custom fitted, and polished this morning by him. 

“Do I pass inspection?” Harold said, without taking his eyes from his paper. 

John laughed, and hoisted himself up above the bronze branch to work his triceps. “Yeah,” he managed to puff out between each crunch. “You’re doing fine.” He was showing off, and he knew it, but Harold’s indifference was too studied, too careful. Harold was watching him; John just hadn’t caught him at it. He switched to one-handed pull-ups, and let his t-shirt climb a little higher over his belly, showing a line of hair, his navel. 

“If only you were upside down,” said Harold. “I could say ‘How low will it go?’” 

John pulled up and rested his belly on the branch as if to swing upside down, just to see what happened. Harold could hide a lot from John, but he couldn’t cover the physicality of his heartbeat, and John caught the faintest, faintest uptick in his pulse. Then he let himself down to the ground and walked over to sit beside Harold. He didn’t mean to antagonise someone who had continually treated him with respect. Speaking of which, when he raised an arm to stretch, he caught a whiff of himself, and immediately shifted downwind of Harold. He’d been sweating for a couple of hours now, and it was a warm day. Nobody deserved to be subjected to that, least of all a fastidious billionaire in the plaza of his own building. 

“I’m curious,” said Harold. “You come here quite often. There have to be more convenient places to exercise. Places with actual gym equipment. Unless you prefer modern art for that purpose.” 

John reached over his head to stretch his triceps. “At least it has a purpose,” he said, suddenly tetchy at the personal question, for all he’d been showing off a few moments ago. 

“I thought at first that it was part of your strategy to stalk me,” Harold said. “But it seems to have persisted beyond the time of my employment here.” 

“There’s something about this place,” said John. He put a leg up on the bench and pulled his toes towards him, bending double, ear to knee. “Is it – is it something to do with Cascade? Or the way the Machine works?” he asked, suddenly. 

Harold seemed startled by the question. “Why would it be?” 

“Things are a bit smoother here, for my senses,” said John. He stretched his other leg while he though about how to explain it. “They shouldn’t be – they should be just as jangled as over there across the street – but somehow, being close to the plaza… it’s the nearest I can get to the feeling I had with my Guide, back in the agency. When it was good, I mean.” 

Harold was watching him, sceptical, and John shrugged. “I don’t have to lie to you, Finch. It’s how it is. It was even better when I was inside, but you had yourself fired, so I have to stay out here."

“Well, if that’s the case,” said Harold, standing and tucking his newspaper under his arm. “Shall we investigate?” 

Harold took him to the underground parking garage, and let himself in with the swipe of a card. “It could be problematic, if the desk staff see me come in through the front door,” he said. 

“Because nobody knows you own the place,” said John. “Why don’t they know? I mean, who would care?” 

“The people who bought the Machine, for one.” Harold swiped his card again at the elevator, and when it swung open, he rested his palm against a glossy black plate below the number pad. It was a palm reader, John knew that, but there was something gentle about the way Harold did it, as if in greeting an old friend. The elevator rose smoothly. John could hear the floors whooshing past; they were travelling rapidly. 

“How are you feeling now?” Harold asked. 

John leaned against the wood panelled wall; it was cool against the sweat on his back. “Good,” he said. “Satisfied? Yeah, that’s how it feels. Like I’m in the right place now.” 

Harold shook his head, and now, inside the walls of black glass John could feel all sorts of things coming off him: wonderment, curiosity, a pinch of grief and bitterness. That was unusual enough that he unspooled his senses to the full extent of his abilities. They were brilliantly clear, acute and focused, able to hear people from the ground floor to the roof garden. 

“What is this place?" he asked Harold. "I feel like an antenna that just got tuned." 

Harold said nothing, but now his mouth was tense, his jaw clenched. The elevator doors opened on an empty floor, littered with cords and steel racks. It looked very much like someone had moved out in a hurry, and failed to get cleaners in, but John felt his shoulders settle, and his heart rate slow. This was a good place, a childhood place, a place of familiarity, if not necessarily one of safety. He reached out to touch the wall as he passed into the room, and zoomed back in his mind to the first night with the foster parents who would later adopt him: the wallpaper was clean but imperfect, with the blemishes and marks that come from an active family living their lives. He remembered seeing a bike leaning on the wall, yellow streamers hanging from the handles, and longing to ride it though he didn't know how. The place smelled like oranges and clean laundry, and though he didn't know it at the time, he was going to be very happy here for years. 

"Mr Reese." Harold's voice broke through, and John slipped easily back to the future. "Are you all right?" He stood a good three feet distant from John, but John had an idea he'd seen most of the zone. Ah well, there was nothing identifiable in it.

John nodded. "You know not to touch me when that happens? We can snap out of those a little edgy." But not this time; John felt oddly tranquil about that little flashback.

Harold's hands were behind his back. "I don't think that's going to be a problem." Indeed, John couldn't remember the last time he and Harold had made physical contact, since that initial moment when John tried to throttle him. He didn't know whether that was just Harold, or his understanding of Sentinels, or both. 

He wandered through the large, empty room, stepping over cables, touching everything: fittings, metal shelves, cords dangling from overhead outlets. 

"What was this place for?" he asked. "Why do I feel good here?"

"This is where I built the Machine," said Harold. "And I have no idea why you would even recognise it." He was curious, John saw, but so cautious, so careful not to let anything slip past to John's mind. 

John had reached the end of the room now, where the windows would fill the space with light, if they weren't blocked by server racks and cloth-covered partitions. He put a shoulder to one of the metal shelves and shoved it along the ground, experimentally, exposing a wall of glass. A beam of light angled into the room, setting dust motes alive and gleaming on all the sharp edges of the metal shelving. 

For the first time this morning, looking down on the city below, John felt fear unfurl in his chest. He hadn't admitted to himself how settled he became when Harold was around, how even without touching John's thoughts, Harold helped John center, keep his senses under control. This morning had been good, and he'd woken with the expectation that there would be more good mornings to follow. That was foolish of him. He'd made a terrible mistake. 

Harold, of course, caught all of this sudden doubt and anxiety. "What's happening, Mr Reese?" 

John's breath came faster, short and shallow, harsh in his throat, as it had when he came out of surgery. There had been a taste, a medical taste, blood and anaesthetic mixing with every gasp, and it had been over powering. His legs gave out suddenly and he folded downwards, remembering things, remembering the helicopter ride, the leather chair, his eyelids held open, cool oxygen pouring into his lungs. There had been straps on his head, on his arms. 

I don't want to remember this. John's mouth was tightly shut, so he knew he hadn't spoken, but the words bounced around inside him, hopeless and desperate. Stop thinking about this, he told himself desperately. I don't want to remember. He wasn't sure if he'd spoken aloud or not, but somebody answered him anyway. 

_Then you do not need to remember._

The words were a clear, dry voice in his head, the tone that Harold used on the rare occasion that he made a joke. To his relief, the voice immediately pulled him out of the zone. The panic had been so intense that John didn't care if Harold had overstepped their agreement; the memory was folding up, smaller and smaller, and with it went the olfactory signals, the tactile and visual. They weren't gone; he could see exactly where in his mind they sat, which was after his first surgery and before the quiet cell in the military hospital. It had stopped resonating, though, and he could consider it with calmness. 

John had the impression that arms were wrapped around him, and he filled in the sensory details himself: his face pressed against Harold's waistcoat, Harold's hands on him, stroking his back through the thin t-shirt he worked out in, keeping him close. Harold's presence was like a blanket, heavy and warm and shielding. When he finally opened his eyes, it was a shock to see Harold still standing distant from him. 

"Are you all right, Mr Reese?" Harold's hands hung by his side, which was odd, because John could still feel the impression of them on his shoulder blades. 

He hauled himself upright because it was the right thing to do, because he had to be able to defend himself and Harold at any time, regardless of the way his brain was telling his body to behave. 

"I'm fine," he said, though he patently wasn't. At Harold's expression of disbelief, John took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I will be fine. How were you doing that, without physical contact?" 

Harold was obviously confused. "I haven't done anything, Mr Reese. You, however, seem to be suffering considerably." 

"I felt you in my head," said John. "It's okay, I can't blame you; that was a really bad one. I don't know what it is about that window, but my brain is terrified of it." 

"I assure you, Mr Reese, when I make a promise I adhere to it. I was nowhere near your mind." Harold's back was stiff, his manner formal and all signs of the easy, sardonic sense of humour had disappeared. John reached out for him mentally, since that was possible inside IFT. He touched ice. Harold had frozen him out, and all he could detect was cold anger. 

"I'm sorry," said John, though there was nothing between them to apologise for. "I think I'm a little jumpy." 

Harold gestured towards the elevators. "Shall we leave? This place seems to be unsettling on many levels. Perhaps we can revisit the questions we have when you're feeling a little better." 

John ran his fingers through his hair, found it stiff with dried sweat. "Maybe when I've cleaned up a bit." 

Harold nodded amiably, but John knew there would be carefully constructed distractions to keep him away from the topic. The numbers never stopped coming, after all. 

 

**2013**

Walking away from John and Harold was both easier and harder than Shaw expected. That quiet, calm room had been wonderful, and she wanted more than she cared to admit to go back there and rest in safety. The innate territoriality towards other Sentinels had become a kind of jealousy, and she could easily have taken John down right now just for having that level of control and protection every day when she and Cole had stumbled along in blinkers and hobbles. That was an irrational feeling, she knew, but the ease with which she crossed the busy street, avoiding taxis and bike couriers was astonishing. She walked three blocks against evening traffic, and didn't even have a headache. 

Cole's bond was completely gone, she could tell that: she'd had enough bonds in her career to be able to tell one Guide's work from another, and while Harold's fastidious precision was very clear, Cole's more relaxed efficiency had faded to nothing. Shaw ignored the twist of grief in her gut at that realisation. She'd be making Control pay for Cole's murder soon enough. 

The meeting with Wilson and his boss was at a gala event, and for that she'd need clothes, make-up, shoes. There were three ISA safe houses within walking distance that would have all of those things, but Shaw didn't like her chances of accessing those and walking out in one piece. She stopped at a ticket office, where a line of people jostled and needled each other. She sidled up to the most annoying person; a man in an oversized suit jacket, vaping and bad mouthing everyone in the line and indeed, in the entire city into his expensive, jewel-caked phone case. 

"Hey," he said to Shaw, who stood innocently next to him. "No line jumping." Through his teeth, he blew a cloud of banana-scented smoke as he jabbed his finger in her direction. 

Shaw took a couple of wobbly steps towards him, and slurred drunkenly, patting him on the chest and shoulder. "Can't you do me a favour, handsome?" 

The man seemed torn between flattery and irritation, then settled for anger. He pushed Shaw away with a sneer and put his phone to his ear again. "I swear to god, Ramon, the drunk bitches in this town are getting really low-brow." 

Shaw walked away with his wallet, a set of keys, and a strong urge to puke up fake banana, despite Harold's good work. Even the garbage in the next alley was preferable to that reek. She moved away from the street lights and opened the wallet, grabbing the cash and cards, then flinging the banana-scented pleather into a dumpster. 

A waft of sea-salt rose drifted down from a fire escape, and Shaw turned, weapon drawn. 

"That was pretty smooth, Shaw." It was the woman from the Suffolk Hotel, not-Veronica, or what did John call her? Root. She'd changed out of her not-Veronica costume, and now wore a long red woollen coat. It made a good target. Shaw slipped her finger against the trigger, ready to put a bullet into the woman the moment she tried anything. 

"What do you want?" She didn't use Root's name; Root didn't seem like the kind of person you want to be giving intelligence to for free. 

Root leaned on the railing with a coquettish smile. "I've been a good girl, and done my homework," she said. "Your friend Cole was right; Daniel Aquino was in New York on Cascade's dollar." She ducked under the railing and climbed down to street level. 

Shaw tracked her all the way with the Glock; there was no way she was letting Root get the drop on her again. Still, Root obviously had ways of getting intel, and intel was important. "What was he doing with Cascade?" 

"It's a medical procedure, isn't it? Whatever they do that makes you a Sentinel." Root's expression was less playful now and in her face, Shaw could see the wheels of a hungry intelligence turning. "Did they do it here in the city?" 

"Why do you say that?" Shaw kept Root in front of her at all times. It hadn't actually; the procedure, which to be honest, had been only a little worse than a dental extraction, had taken place in a base hospital in Virginia. 

"Daniel Aquino was paid to design and build a secure facility here in the city. For Cascade." 

"A facility for what?" asked Shaw. "When? Where?" 

Root walked a slow circle around Shaw, and Shaw turned with her, never letting Root step out of her shot. 

"You seem different," Root said eventually. "This morning, I could practically hear the static coming off you." 

Shaw shrugged one shoulder, so it didn't throw off her aim. "It was a long night," she said. "I got over it. You know, after you left me to die in that hotel room." She didn't like the way that Root was looking at her, as if Shaw were a treasure chest, with a lock to be picked, and gold to be stolen. 

"Oh, I could see that Harold's tall, dark and simian friend was on the tail of those goons." Root plunged her fists in her pockets, then at Shaw's head gesture, pulled them out and waggled her empty fingers at her to show she was unarmed. "I told you I read your file. I knew you'd be all right. Now, are you coming to the Cascade facility, or do I get to go through all that data by myself?" 

She had a point; Shaw wasn't ready to let anyone have control of intel that had gotten Cole killed. 

"Turn around, put your hands on the wall," she said, and holstered her gun. 

Root gave a girlish giggle that didn't fool Shaw for a moment, but she obeyed. "There was nothing in your file about this, either," she said. When Shaw started to pat her down, Root sighed happily and leaned into the touch. "Not that I'm complaining." 

Shaw searched her all over, thoroughly, ignoring her squeals when Shaw's finger moved past the top of her thighs. She stowed the results – a wallet thick with cards in many names, three handguns, a Maglite, the Taser, four phones, a collection of wire and plastic that she couldn't identify, and the smallest card skimmer she'd ever seen – in her pockets, and pulled Root away from the wall. 

"The hell you need three guns for? Can you even fire one accurately?" 

Root fluttered her eyelashes. "Go ahead and try me, Shaw. You'll find out." Sea-salt and rose was in every breath Shaw took. 

"Tell me where we're going, and for God's sake, dial that down if you want me to be any use." Shaw took her by the arm, and walked her briskly to the curb to hail a cab. She kept the handgun pressed to Root's ribs as they wove through theatregoers. 

The cab reeked of old smoke and a really nasty blue cheese dressing that had dripped down one of the doors. Harold's control still held, though, and Shaw weathered the trip with relative ease. Root's questions, though, were rapid and unending. 

"Cole was your Guide, wasn't he? I'm guessing they're not going to assign you another one, since they're sending teams of people to hunt you down." Root somehow had gotten hold of the taxi driver's phone and scrolled through lines of code while the questions bubbled out of her. "I've done my research, and there's two things I really don't understand: what Cascade has to do with Northern Lights, and how it is that I'm a Guide." 

Shaw leaned her head against the seat, despite the layered stories of odour drifting up from the leather. "You're not a Guide," she said. "You're some kind of freak natural talent." She closed her eyes, trusting in her other senses to tell her if Root was doing anything obnoxious. Root sat perfectly still, though, and that was weird enough that Shaw opened her eyes again after a while to see what she was doing. She met Root's gaze; it was steady, analytical, and fixed on Shaw's face. 

"Who sorted your head out, Shaw? It's all tidy in there." 

Shaw sat up straight; she hadn't felt a thing, not a single thread of intrusion. She jabbed the gun into Root's side. "You stay the hell out of my head, or I'll push back so hard your retinas float off." She locked down her mind, which, unfortunately meant that her abilities were dimmed as well. 

"Mm, you do say the sweetest things," said Root, and Shaw remembered that flush of arousal she'd caught the last time they'd been together. 

"Look," she said, finally. "We both want to know what's going on at this facility, and I can't do my best work if I'm constantly watching my back. You need my best work, and I'm guessing from all that intel you scraped up in a few hours, I'm going to need your best work too. So…" She poked Root in the arm to punctuate. "Don't. Mess. With. Me." 

Root rolled her eyes. "Messing with you is so much fun, though! But you do have a point, I suppose. All right. If you want to see my best work, give me back my stuff." 

Shaw gave her everything but the guns. And the Taser – there was no way she was letting Root have that thing without close supervision. 

Root had the taxi drop them at a corner in Midtown, and walked them to a perfectly normal apartment building with good security but nothing exceptional. A doorman waited to open doors for residents, and there was a security guard behind a desk where visitors were expected to sign in. 

"Distract the guard," said Root, standing still and tapping on her phone as if she were just checking her messages. 

Shaw shrugged a shoulder and walked past the doorman who held open the door. Inside, the guard raised his eyebrows at her and gestured for her to sign in. Shaw leaned on the desk with a sigh of frustration and launched into a long running sentence. "I'm so sorry – I don't know if this is the right building or not. I'm looking for Alex Taylor; if he lives here, you'll know him, because he's really tall, like, I'm talking six eight, maybe six nine and he's got red hair, I mean really red, he doesn't touch it up at all, the bastard, it's completely natural, but you know what I mean, it's kind of eye catching, and even though I'm pretty sure I've got the right address, you need to tell me if you don't know him because if this is his place you're going to recognise him…" 

Shaw caught movement behind the man and forced herself not to look, but to keep words rolling out of her mouth as Root slipped a cable from the security cameras to one of her phones. The screens glitched briefly, then settled again, this time with an image of an empty lobby. 

The security guard was right at the end of his tether when Root took Shaw's arm with a wide smile. She pressed her lips to Shaw's and held the embrace for a little longer than was necessary for a normal greeting. Shaw couldn't help herself; her hands came up behind Root, caught in her hair, and for a moment she was lost in the sensory overload: the texture of Root's hair, the way her body responded and Shaw's body answered that response, a wash of smell and taste and touch… 

They pulled apart, and Root's eyes were wide, her chest rising a little faster. She recovered quickly, though. 

"There you are, honey! We thought you'd never make it – Alex is going to be late, if he makes it all." Root turned to the bewildered security guard. "We're heading up to Gerard Santos' place, he's having some kind of do. As usual." She rolled her eyes dramatically, and apparently she'd done her research, because the guard did too. 

"You head on up, ladies," he said. "And if you can keep Mr Santos from setting any fires this time, I'd be really grateful." 

"Tell me about it," said Root, and led Shaw to the elevator. 

Once the doors shut behind them, Shaw grabbed Root with both hands and slammed her against the wall. The air rushed out of Root's lungs with a sigh, and she wrapped her legs around Shaw's hips. 

"This is exciting," Root said, as Shaw put her fingers around Root's slim neck. "How does asphyxiation work, reciprocally? Do you choke yourself while you're choking me?" Her voice tailed off as Shaw closed her fingers, enough to make breathing a little dicey. 

Shaw was feeling dizzy, but she didn't know if it was the rose and sea salt pouring off Root in waves, or the backwash down the mental link between them. She wheezed in a good, long breath, and concentrated on calm, slow thoughts to bring her heart rate down. "I can hold mine for six minutes. You think you'll outlast me?" She stared unblinking at Root, and tightened her grip a little more. 

Root's pulse, under Shaw's fingertips, started to race, fast and shallow like a rabbit. Shaw tensed the muscles she'd need to push Root further up the elevator wall, and let Root read the body language via their connection: Shaw's calculations of how high she'd have to push to get good compression on the trachea, the friction of that wool coat on the stainless steel wall, her clear awareness of how Root's blood oxygen was starting to fall. 

"We don't have to fight!" Root said, desperately, her voice hoarse. "We don't… We want the same thing… You need me…Please, Shaw!" 

Shaw loosened her grip. "Tell me one true thing," she said. "Why is this so important to you?" She let her senses unfurl, in the quiet of the elevator, aware of Root's heartbeat, her perspiration, the way her pupils were getting bigger and darker. There was vulnerability to letting her guard down, but Shaw would hear lies and truths as clearly as if they were rung on a bell. 

Root's expression changed like storm clouds racing across the sky: apprehension, jealousy, fear, and finally resignation. She looked down at the ground. "I'm here for Northern Lights," she said. "They're keeping a prisoner at the centre of the project, and I want to set them free." 

She was telling the truth. It might not be the complete truth, but from the waver in her voice and the clammy texture of her pale skin, truth wasn't a thing Root gave up easily.

"Who is the prisoner?" asked Shaw. "Someone you know?" 

Root shivered under her grip. "I think so. I've been waiting all my life to meet them." 

Hearing her speak, voice soft and awestruck, made Shaw remember her surgical rotation and the first time she touched a beating heart, with nothing but thin latex between her skin and the essential organ of life. She was breathing in time with Root now, their shoulders rising and falling together. There was nothing to say, so she nodded and let go of Root's throat. 

The elevator came to a gentle stop, and with her senses extended, Shaw was suddenly aware of all the other people in the building. Root had been right; there was a party going on somewhere around the fourth floor, all loud shouting and pulsing bass. Shaw tried to reel her mind in, so that she didn't feel as though she was right down there, tasting liquor and cigarette smoke, trapped by the press of hot, over-stimulated bodies. She didn't panic easily, but she had unwrapped her defences so completely that it was hard to bring them back up around her again. 

"Sameen," said Root, standing well clear of Shaw's body. "Come back to me now. We have work to do." Her voice was calm, and she gathered Shaw together with the deftness of someone who had been a Guide for years. Shaw slid easily along the line of her voice, until she felt her own body solid around her. 

She stamped her feet and shook her head to make certain that she could trust what she was seeing and hearing, then stuck her chin out at Root. "So, what do we do now?" 

Root smiled, and slid one of her blank credit cards through the security reader on the elevator panel. "Now we go and find out what Daniel Aquino built here for Project Cascade."


	8. Chapter 8

**2012**

John could do worse than working a number at a country club. He'd already had the pleasure of watching Harold in his Crane persona deftly avoid being roped into a croquet game by offering to keep score. Their number was sullenly playing tennis with her peers, and it had been easy for John to negotiate his way into the mixed doubles game on the next court. 

"How is the game?" Harold's voice was underscored by the gentle click of croquet balls and polite applause. John served and hit an incandescent ace, sending the man on the opposing team into a frantic, racquet-smashing tantrum. John's partner, a woman with a brunette pixie cut, snorted under her breath and gave John a stealthy thumbs up.

"Set!" said the umpire. "Get that language under control, Mr Waggener!" 

John slung a towel round his neck, threw his partner a bottle of water, and cracked one open for himself. 

"Sydney's dad has quite the temper," he said. "Poor kid looks like she wants to fall through the tennis court." 

"I've cloned her phone," said Harold. "She has, in the last half-hour, sent love via Facebook to her mother in the hospital, texted her best friend about a fight with her father, and snapchatted a pug she described as 'adorbs'."

"That sounds like a regular teenager to me," said John. He straightened the strings on his racquet, waiting for the next set to kick off. The umpire had his phone to his ear; they were in for a delay. That gave him time to watch Sydney: when she shook herself out of her sulk, she had a hell of a backhand. 

"I think Sydney might have inherited her father's temper. Unfortunately, Ms Waggener has accumulated quite the criminal history for a fifteen year old and she has several sealed juvenile records." Harold said. John could hear him writing with a pencil on his scorecard. Further away, there was the clink of a fine porcelain cup against a saucer. "I'm working on them now, but I can also see that the Potomac School is her third placement in two years." 

John watched Mr Waggener posture in front of the umpire, his face red and his thinning hair standing on end. "If she's got homicidal intent towards her father, I think all she'll have to do is wait. He's going to burst a blood vessel. Hang on, Finch…" 

The umpire finished his phone call with a grimace and climbed down off his seat. He walked up to Mr Waggener, leaning in for a private conversation. John turned his back and closed his eyes, listening for their voices above the thwack of ball against racquet and the hubbub of chatter around the courts. 

"Mr Waggener, the management have asked me to remind you of your precarious position here at the club. The day spa has a vacancy for a massage, I think that might be beneficial for everybody's stress levels." 

Mr Waggener's face went from red to magenta. He glowered across to the next court at Sydney, and spun on his heel, stalking towards the main building. 

"Well," said John's partner. "I suppose the match is ours." She gave him a considering glance. "You want to go get a drink? We can talk game tactics." 

John grinned; she'd been a good partner. "Can we put that on hold for a bit? I have to go check on business first." He gave a wry shrug. "Not everyone gets the weekend off." 

She smiled, rueful. "You know, workplace stress takes years off your life. But okay; I'll see you around." 

As he walked away, pulling on a jacket, he said softly, "You hear that, Finch? Workplace stress can kill." 

Harold's voice was dry. "I did warn you, Mr Reese. In our very first conversation, I believe." 

John walked past the knot of teenagers on the other court, all clustered together and whispering. Sydney wasn't there. He scanned the bleachers – nothing – then sat, checking his phone as a disguise, while he listened for her voice, tried to pick up a scent. There were too many people on the courts, though, and without a Guide to bring him back afterwards, John didn't want to risk letting his senses go any further. Fortunately, he had other ways. 

He tapped his earpiece. "I've lost Sydney," he said. "She disappeared when her father stormed off to the day spa." 

"She received a text seven minutes ago," said Harold. "An invitation to a rendezvous, rendered in as few syllables as possible. Her phone puts her near the large tulip poplar on the west lawn, which I believe is a traditional teenage meet-up point here." 

John cut through the day spa to make sure that Sydney's father was behaving himself. Inside, he heard Mr Waggener telling his masseur how to do a better job. He wouldn't be bothering anyone for an hour or so, John reasoned. The reception desk was unattended, so John, still in his tennis whites, took a moment to rifle through the computer. Harold Crane was listed as a lifetime member, though he had only joined the club two years ago. His attendance was minimal but regular: three fundraisers a year. Only one thing on Mr Crane's record stood out, and that was his attendance at something called The Blessing of the Green, which he attended in the first week of his membership, and not again since. 

"Are you learning anything from the member's database, Mr Reese?" Harold must have handed off his scoring duties, because John could hear the soft tap-tap of his keyboard. His question was pointed. Despite the time they'd worked together, he still had a particular tone of voice for when he caught John snooping. 

"Two things, Finch: Mr Waggener's membership is currently on probation thanks to several code violations by his teenage daughter, and a certain Mr Crane seems to have not enjoyed The Blessing of the Green in 2010."

Harold's reaction was overt enough that John heard his shudder down the phone line as a soft rustle of clothing against the wood of his folding chair. "That was one of the first numbers I worked," he said. "It was a less than pleasant experience. There is a certain amount of public nudity involved. These clubs do have their rituals, unfortunately." 

It seemed reasonable that Harold would feel John's intense curiosity as clearly as John had heard his shudder. It wasn't just the idea of Harold and other rich white guys parading in the buff on the Ninth, but of him working numbers before John came along. 

He knew there'd been other men in the library. He could smell them for one thing, and for another, some of them were none too tidy with their gear. He knew they had come after Harold's injury, because they'd cannily stowed their munitions on high shelves or upstairs, in places that Harold found awkward to access. John had taken note of the important things: calibre, the care or lack thereof they'd taken with their weaponry, and any identifying detail, then he'd cleaned and stored properly anything that was salvageable and destroyed the rest. One of them had definitely been Blackwater, from the badges sewn onto a backpack full of frag grenades. John did not like the idea of Harold working with anyone who had come up through Blackwater. 

The carpet in the day spa was thick and plushy, gripping at the rubber soles of his tennis shoes in a way that was disturbing and familiar. He realised what it was about the carpet, as well as the thick quiet of the place, where attendants walked silently from room to room. It was like the still, dead atmosphere of the Cascade hospital, where he'd spent a year doped up to stop him going mad. He felt himself start to zone, and put his hand on his pocketknife, but it wasn’t necessary. There was something else drawing his attention, something urgent and dangerous, drifting high through the corridors, seeping out of the vents. He tipped his head up, took a breath, and realised it was smoke. He tapped his earpiece, and Harold picked up the call. 

"Mr Reese?" 

"Finch, there's a fire. Can you see anything?" John braced himself on the wall, and pulled himself up to a vent. If he listened, if he reached as far down as he could, there was a low crackle, followed by a deep roar. “It’s going to be big,” he said. “It’s pulling in air fast.” 

“I can’t see anything on the cameras,” said Harold. “Wait – there’s smoke coming from the main utilities building. There’s a lot of dangerous chemicals in there; it will certainly spread quickly.” 

“You’d better pull the…” John felt the wall of sound coming from the emergency sirens and got his hands to his ears before his auditory nerve fried, but the noise was still a gut punch. He tamped that down as best he could, keeping his hearing subdued while ushering people out of the day spa, helping the older clients down stairs and into the care of attendants. 

On the west lawn, members and staff of the club congregated in a great milling mass of people, buzzing with gossip and anxiety about the evacuation. John scanned the crowd and spotted Harold moving awkwardly between people with his laptop tucked under his arm. 

“You’re clear, good.” John was surprised at how much relief he felt at seeing Harold here; he almost reached out to grip him by the shoulders. “Have you seen Sydney and her father?”

Harold made a discreet gesture with his chin, towards Waggener, posturing again, threatening a waiter and waving his phone around. 

"He claims he's going to sue," said Harold. "I'm not sure on what ground, exactly." 

"And Sydney?" John turned a circle, scanning the crowd for her face, listening for her voice. “I don't see her, Finch.” He saw the wide tulip poplar at the far edge of the lawn and sprinted in that direction. Harold followed at a slower pace. 

Sydney's phone was behind the broad trunk of the tree, but damaged, the screen smashed, and the sim gone. John crouched over it, breathing in gently, tasting the scent of the last person who had touched it. Harold waited at his side, ready to examine the phone for data. 

"Her father was here," said John. When Waggener touched the phone, he still reeked of anger and tennis shoes, so he must have gone straight from here to the day spa. 

Harold eased a cable into the phone, careful with the broken casing. The screen blinked into life, despite the cracked glass. Meanwhile, John turned back to the fire. A tall pillar of smoke was climbing into the sky, providing a constant irritation niggling at John's throat. He scanned the emergency gathering point; still no sign of Sydney. 

"It seems Sydney was expelled from her last school for wilful destruction of property," said Harold, as he worked. "Two of the black marks against Mr Waggener were due to Sydney's behaviour: vandalism, smoking pot on the grounds. She and her father have had some heated text exchanges about the matter." 

John watched the fire creeping over the roof of the main building. "You think she started this to get her dad. That's why we got her number?" It didn't sit well with him, though he couldn't say why. Maybe it was the way she'd channelled her anger into a ferocious backhand, instead of frothing at the mouth like her father. 

"It's difficult to say, Mr Reese. Sydney has left a trail of damage behind her. Her father, though he demonstrably has anger issues, has never been charged with anything. Not even a noise violation." 

"Not even a parking ticket?" said John. "That's too careful." It made his skin crawl, the extent to which Waggener had protected his own reputation, while letting his daughter's disintegrate. "She's still in there, Finch." It was an instinctive statement. He hadn't detected anything; it would be hard for him to let his senses out amid the hubbub of the evacuation, but something had still filtered through. He knew Sydney was in danger, and that she wanted desperately to live. He turned to Harold, his stomach twisting at what he needed to do next. 

“I'm afraid the security cameras are down.” Harold had his laptop open, but at John's expression closed it again. "What is it?" he said, warily. 

"I can search for her, but if I'm going to pick her up through the noise and smoke, I'm going to be stretched thin," John said, finally. "I might need help coming out again." 

He didn't know what he expected from Harold: fear? Resignation? The level of intimacy that Sentinels and Guides operated under had to be anathema to someone as private as Harold. He didn't detect any fear from Harold, no feeling of him backing away, no revulsion. Harold simply set his jaw and stepped closer. 

"What do you need from me?" he said. 

“Just stop anyone from touching me,” John said. “I’ll scan for a heartbeat.” Harold nodded and held his laptop like a weapon, ready to bat anyone away who approached too closely. John closed his eyes and shut down input as best he could from everything but hearing. Though all his senses were enhanced, hearing was John's strongest. Kara's had been sight; there was nobody who could out-snipe Kara Stanton, but John at full extension could pick one voice out of ten thousand in a stadium. It had been a long time since he had unfurled it to this degree but the routine was as familiar as breathing. First came his own body awareness: the sound of his own muscles shifting microscopically, blood flowing under his skin, all the bones of his inner ear moving. Once acknowledged, those sounds fell into the background and he caught the immediate periphery: Harold's breathing, the valves of his heart like a friendly, familiar clock, the slow compression of the soft lawn beneath his leather soles. John told his mind to ignore those things, as well as the burr of conversation from the crowd and the clatter of fire-engines unravelling their gear. That left the crackle and snap of the fire consuming the club. He floated above that, and hunted instead for the lub-dup of a heartbeat.

He found five. In the kitchens, there were three clustered close together behind thick walls. In an office upstairs was a tiny pulse, too fast to be an adult, even a small one. The fifth, unnaturally calm, was stationary in the day spa. John took note of the sounds, then braced himself for the unpleasant slide back into his body and the inevitable rawness that came with having made himself so vulnerable. 

He put up his hand, the Cascade sign asking for a Guide’s help to pull his senses back in. It was instinctive at this level of extension, a habit drilled into him early. There was a moment of hesitation, then Harold took his hand and John slammed back into awareness with a gasp. He opened his eyes to stare at Harold, shocked. He heard echoes from the contact, melodic and distant, like wind-chimes from a neighbour's house.

“I’m sorry,” said Harold, immediately releasing John’s hand. “I know we have an agreement, but you seemed to be asking for help."

"It's fine," John said, slightly dazed. Fine wasn't really the right word for the order in his head. Everything was clear and focused, and all the detritus of the day had settled: the tooth-rattling edginess from the echo of the tennis balls, the blue-tinged chemical taste of the pool, and, oddest of all, the crawling memory of the thick carpet in the Cascade hospital. Then, overlaid on this calm came the five heartbeats, all different, all differentiated, shown on a map of the club. John suffered no interference from the milling crowd or the flashing lights of the fire engines, no pain and rawness, no heaviness or oppression, and everything in his mind was settled, ready for the next challenge. Harold had done all of this in seconds. John spared himself a moment to wonder what his time in the CIA would have been like with this kind of support, then around them, people began to shout and point. The fire had reached the roof of the main building. Four of the heartbeats had been in there. 

"Go," said Harold, and John was moving before he realised it, running towards the smoke filled building with a path plotted out for him, the fastest way to reach all five. His earpiece activated, though at a lower volume now that Harold had seen how on edge his hearing was. "I'll send fire fighters after you, but you'll be much faster on your own. And John?" 

John stopped halfway towards the fire and glanced back at Harold, inquiring. Harold's voice was still soft, but he heard it in stereo, from the earpiece and from his mouth. "Please be careful," he said. His concern lingered in John's mind, an artefact of the contact they'd made. John's instinct was to push it down, but instead, he let it sit. He wondered why as he ran towards the kitchens, then he was inside the smoky corridors, and his thoughts were otherwise occupied. 

The fire was highest in the maintenance shed attached to the indoor pool complex. The kitchens were close by, and smoke had filled them from the ceiling to the countertops, but John moved quick and low towards the cool-room, where he could hear the heartbeats of three people, all beginning to escalate in panic. He threw open the door, and found three kitchen workers, huddled together. They shrunk back, trying to hide behind cartons and shelves. 

"I'm not Immigration," said John. "You need to go, now." 

Harold had been true to his word; a crew of fire fighters met John outside the kitchen, and ushered them to safety. John slipped away from their group, scaled a drainpipe to the second floor, hissing at the heat, shaking his hands. He was much closer to the fire here, he could hear the crackle of it in the roof, and all around him the plaster ceiling was turning black and bubbling. John tracked the fast, faint heartbeat, which he suddenly realised could be an infant, left to sleep in one of the guest suites upstairs. He dodged falling plaster, following the pulse to a suite, and burst through to find a small dog, a Yorkshire terrier, frantically scratching at the window. It was terrified; its heart thumped so hard John could see its chest shake. He scooped it up by the belly – it was really only a handful of hair and eyes – and it buried itself gratefully between his blazer and his tennis polo. John measured the distance between here and the day spa, decided there was no time to drop the dog off, and ran. 

The walls surrounding the maintenance shed were beginning to collapse; John could hear snapping timbers and breaking glass, as well as muted screams from the people watching. If Sydney had set this fire, the consequences were going to be a lot larger than getting expelled from school. He wondered if she had enjoyed lighting that flame, watching her father's place of safety start to burn. 

_Hurry._ The words were cool in his mind, though they didn't come from the earpiece, or from John's extended hearing. He tapped the line. "Did you say something?" 

"No." Harold sounded preoccupied, and down the line, John heard a police radio crackle and beneath that, the click-click of the flashing lights. "No, I know I saw somebody at the window, over there. You need to send a crew in." He stepped away from those sounds. "Mr Reese, I was directing rescue services in your direction. It's a little more convoluted when I can't say that my hyper-sensory friend is homing in on heartbeats inside the structure currently on fire." The edge of worry in Harold's voice was underscored by the desperate chant in John's head to get this done, get her safe, run. 

He jumped down a carpeted staircase from landing to landing, until he was back down to ground level, where the smoke rolled across the ceiling. Then it was a flat sprint across a courtyard to the low brick buildings that made up the day spa. The smoke had permeated here but only just: a constant ashy taste on John's tongue. The fire crawled along the rooftops of the main building but had not leapt the courtyard to the day spa yet. 

The heartbeat had been unnaturally steady when he'd first scouted it out, but now it was rising in sharp bursts of acceleration. He found his way through the warren, feet thumping hard into the muffling carpet, to the suite where the last person was trapped. Someone was in there, breathing rapidly through their nose, kicking hard at solid metal. He wondered, as he kicked the door in, why the person inside hadn't just left when the area was evacuated. When he saw Sydney Waggener handcuffed to a heavy massage table, he understood. Sydney was fighting hard, her foot braced against the central plinth in an attempt to snap the chain between the cuffs. Blood trickled down her forehead, her left eye was swollen shut, and from the way her vision tracked, John thought she must have been unconscious until a few minutes ago, when her heart started to accelerate. Duct tape over her mouth explained the lack of sound from the room, apart from her racing heart. She started when John appeared, struggled awkwardly around the table so that it was between the two of them. 

"Sydney," John said, his hand outstretched. "I'm here to help you." 

Above the duct tape, Sydney's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Then she saw the pointed snout of the little dog in John's blazer, and she stared, confused. John pulled his jacket aside a little to show the Yorkie's face. 

"I'm on rescue duty," he said. "Someone left this guy behind." 

Sydney's jaw clenched, and she made the decision that John was hoping for: that a murderer probably wouldn't take the time to rescue a dog, nor would the dog trust him. She drew back from the massage table, and John bobbed down to examine the cuffs. In struggling, Sydney had managed to dislocate one thumb, but the cuffs had been put on so tight that they cut into the flesh of her wrists, so she couldn't escape them. John took a chance they were law enforcement, and tried a couple of standard keys, then, when those failed, went for the picks. The whole time, Sydney stood still with amazing composure for her age. She trembled slightly, but when John glanced up to see how she was going, he read rage in her expression rather than fear. The cuffs sprang open, and she pulled free then tore off the duct tape with a wince. 

"Who are you?" she demanded. "Who sent you?" 

"Come on," said John. "We need to move quickly." Smoke was already threading into the room under the door. He touched it: the wood was still cool, so the fire hadn't spread into the corridor yet, but it wasn't far away. 

Instead of following him, Sydney grabbed the wastepaper basket and upended it on the floor. She scrabbled for pieces of hot pink plastic, gathering them up in her uninjured hand. 

John crouched down beside her. "We have to go, Sydney," he said, urgently.

"Not without this," she said. "Dad smashed it, but there might still be data on it." She showed him the fragments of a broken flash drive. The casing was broken, and the circuit board too, but she scrabbled for every piece. 

John scanned the counters for a container to hold the pieces. "Is this really the only copy you have?" He didn't know what was on the drive, but it was obviously precious, and if working with Harold had taught him anything about technology, it was that you should back up your work. 

"This isn't something I want hundreds of copies of, okay?" Sydney's anger and fear bubbled up, and she scrubbed defiantly at the tears that welled. John silently passed her a Ziploc bag, and she put all the pieces in, sealed it and stuffed it in a pocket. 

John's earpiece woke. "Mr Reese, I hope you're no longer in there." Harold sounded worryingly calm. People around him were gasping and shouting, and then a great rumbling crash rippled through the walls. One of the main buildings had subsided. 

"I'm almost out," said John. He held out a hand for Sydney, put his other on the bulge of the terrier tucked in his blazer, and opened the door. A wave of heat rolled up the corridor, and he could hear crackling, smell carpet burning and paint peeling off the walls. "Come on," he said to the girl, and put her in front of him, away from the fire. As they ran, he spoke softly to Finch. "I have Sydney with me. She's going to need a medic, but we need to keep it quiet. I don't want her father to see her." 

Harold picked up on John's decision not to use Waggener's name where Sydney could hear it. "Very well, but please don't dawdle." 

The smoke was thick and in every breath, but John had the layout of the place in his memory, thanks to that brief contact with Harold. When the lights finally gave out, he guided Sydney with touches to her shoulder, all the way to the other end of the day spa complex. Then he put his elbow through one of the windows, picked Sydney up bodily, and lowered her out onto the ground. He passed her the little dog, stepped out himself, and hurried her towards a copse of pine trees. Harold waited there for them, in a golf cart, of all things, with a paramedic by his side. 

"Bribed," he mouthed at John, while the paramedic got to work on Sydney's injuries. The Yorkie pranced around at her feet yipping, until John gave it a look and it shut its mouth with an audible snap. Harold took a water bottle from the ice-chest in the golf cart, bent awkwardly, and let the little dog drink, tilting the bottle gently so that it wasn't overwhelmed. 

"How are you?" he asked John, as if they had met at golf. Behind them, the day spa was collapsing inwards, crackling and popping like the biggest of bonfires. 

John shrugged. His eyes stung and his throat was raw, and it was going to take a while for the smell of smoke to leave him. He reached down to pat the dog and winced; there was a row of blisters across his palm. Harold noticed, reached for John then hesitated and proffered the water bottle instead. 

"The drainpipe, I believe," he said, standing upright with a hiss, while John poured the water over the burn. 

John nodded. "It's not bad," he said. Words were hard to find now that he was away from the crisis, so he concentrated on keeping watch. He wanted to explain about Sydney and the flash drive, but it was hard to pull the sentences together. He took a breath, let his shoulders settle and put his good hand over Harold's. He felt Harold's thoughts swoop close to his, with only a paper-thin barrier between them.

Harold started at the contact, then turned John's hand over in his as if to read it like a circuit diagram. "I suppose this is a bad time to say that I've never actually done this before. Not deliberately, anyway." 

That was surprising to John, and, he thought, not the complete truth. "You did it just before," he said. "With the map?" God, he was so tired, he had to be, to let Harold do this. Harold, who had said he would never lie to John, but had a habit of evading the truth when he felt challenged by it. 

Now Harold was surprised. "I only meant to help you back from wherever you'd gone," he said. "The transmission of information was not intentional. I apologise." 

John was too tired to argue over the details, not after everything he'd done today. Sydney Waggener needed help, and he didn't want his fatigue to endanger her further. "Here," he said, and opened his mind in the way Mark had taught him. All the interactions, from leaving Harold at the croquet game to helping Sydney out of the window, were there for him to sort. "I trust you not to overstep boundaries. We need to help her." 

"All right," said Harold. John felt him lower his barriers, felt the rest of the world go quiet like it had in the hotel the day they met. He closed his eyes and braced himself for the oppressive sensation of a Guide's presence; presumably it would be much worse with someone of Harold's abilities than it was with Mark. 

There was a drift of notes, that melodic sound he'd heard before. "I see," said Harold, and John realised he was already there, already working. He laughed, disbelieving, turning from left to right. There was no pain, no dulling of his senses, and no fear that he was about to lose part of himself to an intruder.

Harold's voice came from within as well as outside his head. "You're surprised. Have I done something wrong?" All the jumbled information, the events of the day that lay scrambled at his feet threatening to trip him, was coming to order. Left behind was a feeling of fulfilment and success, as well as a glowing awe and pride that was most definitely not his own. 

"No," he managed to say. "No, it's good." So good. 

When he opened his eyes, his hand was wrapped around Harold's. His throat was still raw from the smoke but his ears were no longer buzzing, and his fatigue had settled. Still holding John's hand, Harold glanced towards Sydney Waggener, who sat on the golf cart with the dog in her lap. "I'd better examine that flash drive," he said. "From what you showed me, there's a good chance I can recover the data. I suspect that what's on there is going to be fairly reprehensible." John took a breath, and when he let it out, he let Harold's hand go. He felt his body sing with the fading contact, like a great bell in a temple.

Some minutes (hours?) later, he heard video playing on Harold's laptop: Mr Waggener's voice raised in hysterical rage and a woman screaming, in chorus with Sydney's furious shouts and her sisters' shrill cries. He didn't need to hear the thump of wood against skull to put the pieces together. When Sydney's father had put Mrs Waggener in the hospital, Sydney had stepped up as the protector of the family and nearly paid for it with her life. 

That evening, John dozed while Harold drove back to the city. Mr Waggener was in custody under charges of attempted murder and domestic violence, Sydney's footage would stop him ever having access to his family again, and the Yorkie had been rehomed with the Waggener daughters after Harold bought the little dog from the woman who had abandoned it. John watched, half-asleep as Harold negotiated country roads and highways with capable ease. The Bentley had a pleasant, low purr, and the sound rumbled comfortably in John's chest. 

A thought occurred to him. "You said you'd never done this before, but you weren't telling the whole truth." He watched Harold through his eyelashes. Harold frowned as he drove, and John could tell he didn't want to talk about this. 

"Were any of the others – were they like me?" The idea of Harold working with another Sentinel pulled John upright in his seat. His hair was prickling, the way it had when he first met Kara. His good mood, that sleepy, languid feeling that was left over from letting Harold into his head, it was all gone, evaporated in rage. 

Harold's knuckles were white on the wheel, whether from anger or fear, John was afraid to find out. Kara would say 'Oh, John, you moron, you're lucky you're so pretty,' then laugh or maybe stab him. He'd deserve it for walking so stupidly into this trap again when he had been free. 

The car had stopped moving, and John, lost in rage, hadn't even noticed. He realised, when Harold took both his hands, that he probably wasn't driving anymore.

"Yes, John, there were others, but they were not like you. How could they be like you?" That ringing awe and amazement poured over John like sunlight. "There is nobody like you." 

The car was quiet – everything was quiet, except the thump of his own heart and Harold's, slowly synchronising. John felt his barriers fall around him, so easily and so gently. His mind was open and vulnerable, his senses alight and aware, and all the time he felt safe and valued and needed. He had been wrong to defend against this, he had been wrong to fear it, because nothing this honest and undefended could hurt him. Harold's mind was beautiful and gentle and vast, and it was there only for John. He was kissing Harold now, leaning across, and Harold was kissing him with care and wonder. John felt a bubbling of happiness between the two of them, a shared sensation of joy. I'm glad to be alive, one of them thought, and John couldn't tell where the thought started but he agreed. 

**2013**

There was no floor number on the elevator display, Shaw noticed, as the doors slid open. The corridor was dark, with only the palest bar of orange light a long distance away indicating a space with windows watching the sky fade into the never-dark of a big city. It smelled of dust and still air. 

"Nobody's been here for a long time," Shaw said. "Cameras are still rolling though." It was easy, with the calm that Harold had given her, and now Root's presence to gather the flow of data, to pinpoint gentle electronic buzz at various points close to the ceiling of the corridor. The cameras had no LEDs to indicate their presence. 

"You have them under control?" she asked Root, before she let them step out of the elevator. 

"All happily looping footage," Root said at her shoulder. "Ready to go?" 

Shaw drew her gun, and moved a few steps down the corridor, then stopped abruptly. She reached out behind her to prevent Root walking into her in the dim light, and heard or felt her formulate a question. 

"The floor is weird," she said, before Root could ask. "Spongy, or something. I can barely hear my footsteps. Even yours are muffled." 

Root crouched beside the wall, and pulled back the carpet. "There's a layer of thick foam under here. Why? For stealth?" 

Shaw poked the foam, surprised. "For Sentinels," she said. "There was a room like this on base where you'd go when things were too much. We called it the nursery; you only really needed it in the first week of activation." She took in the length of the corridor. "I have no idea why you'd put it here." 

"So that you guys can't hear anyone coming." Root stood and strode to the end of the corridor with surprising speed, enough that Shaw had to run to get in front of her again. 

"I go first," she said, pushing Root behind her. "That's how it goes: I dodge bullets and get data, you stay back and keep everything together, got it?" 

Root let her fingers trail over Shaw's knuckles. "Well, it's not my usual MO, but if you really want to be in charge, I can be flexible." She smirked. "Very flexible." 

Shaw scowled and moved down the corridor with her gun ready. "Not everything is an innuendo, you know." 

"But where's the fun in that?" Root stopped moving. "What's bothering you so much about the walls? You're all tense, like you expect someone to jump out from one." 

Shaw was about to retort that this was a normal state of affairs for an agent planning on making it through the mission intact, when she realised there was something odd about the walls. She stopped too, and thought about it. The sense trace was metallic, a kind of acrid tang on her tongue, like touching it to a battery. 

"There's more to it," said Root. "You're thinking of birthday cake, why?" 

God, she could get deep inside Shaw's mind without Shaw feeling anything, and that was a little terrifying, but she was right. Shaw could see the two mnemonic images coming together: silver acrid metal, and the bright candy colours of birthday cake. It meant something, but there were so many substances she'd been trained to identify, and without someone to decode the memories she couldn't pull this name to the forefront. 

In the very dim light, she could see Root watching her with that analytic expression, as if Shaw were a program to crack. "It's like playing Mahjong," she said, eventually. "I can match the tiles, but I don't know what the images mean." 

"It's a mnemonic dictionary," said Shaw. "We're supposed to be able to identify scents and patterns and sounds, like, nitrates and radio emissions and light frequencies and blood, but a human brain can't hold all that specific information. I've got abbreviations, and then you're supposed help me put it together." It was just that Root didn't know her yet, hadn't learned the symbolic memory triggers. 

"We'll figure it out, Shaw." Root ran her fingers over the wall. "But for now, it feels normal to me." 

Shaw switched on the Maglite and ran it over the painted wall. The texture was carefully obscured but she could see the light scattering in different directions across the wall. "It's inlayed under the paint in a grid."

"Like a circuit?" asked Root. "I don't know why you'd need to lay physical circuitry into a wall." 

Shaw's skin was crawling; she hated this place already. "At least we know Aquino did more than just pad the floor," she said. She pushed on towards the door. She needed to know more about this freaky place tucked away in the middle of the city. 

Root took care of the second retinal scanner with her adapted card skimmer and a photo display on her phone, while Shaw put her ear to the metal of the door and tapped her fingers on it. 

"This is airtight," she said. "Can't hear anything – there's a hollow core of vacuum between the layers, and sound won't travel past that." Her skin was prickling; between their nearly-silent footsteps, the weird metal inlay, and the whole thing hidden between two floors of an apartment building, she understood a little better why Cole had to poke around in this. It felt bad. It felt rotten to the core, an evil that had to be purged. 

The retinal scanner gave a cheerful beep, and Root started typing a sequence into the keypad. Shaw caught her fingers and held them still. "Are you sure you want to open it? We could just blow the whole thing to pieces and walk away." 

She expected Root to crack some joke, or flirt, any of those things that she used to deflect serious discussion, but instead, she just shook her head. "Run away if you want, Shaw, but I'm getting some answers." 

Shaw rolled her eyes, but the insult stung, however predictable Root's tactic was. She let go and stepped back, weapon up ready to meet whatever was on the other side of that door. 

Disappointingly for Shaw, who was all primed with adrenaline, it slid to the side with a hiss and revealed a change room: low benches, clothes hooks hung with white garments, the kind of sealable closets you see on submarines, and a second door with a frosted glass porthole. She stepped cautiously through, felt rubber matting under her feet, spongy and silent like the carpet in the corridor. "Smells like Christmas," she said. "Christmas in the hospital. I don't know what that is." 

Root pointed up, and when Shaw checked the ceiling, she saw aerosol fittings, designed to spray the area with liquid. 

Shaw stepped up on a bench, hissing as the movement tugged at the bullet hole in her gut, but she still couldn't reach the ceiling. "Come here," she said to Root, with one foot out. Root's expression was dubious, but she moved forward and Shaw stepped up onto her shoulders. Root gave an oomph of surprise, but held onto each boot to stabilise Shaw as she found her balance. 

"Yeah, you're good and tall," Shaw said. She pried one of the ceiling panels off, threw it down with a clatter and followed the aerosol line to a labelled tank. Under the panel, the Christmas smell was even stronger, enough that Root picked up on it. 

"It smells like breath mints," she said, struggling under Shaw's weight. "How are you so small and yet so heavy?" 

"Shut up and hold steady," said Shaw. She heaved herself up, halfway into the open ceiling, feet dangling in air above Root. The text on the tank was clearer now. 

"Fucking peppermint oil," she said. She pointed out the misters designed to disperse the oil. "That would definitely put me out of action long enough for someone put me down." Angry, she put a hand over her injury, and jumped down from Root's shoulders and went to the door with the panel of frosted glass. "The hell have they been doing in there?" 

Root cracked open the panel of a second retinal scanner and got to work. "Let's find out," she said. Shaw was right behind her this time when she held up her phone: it was a magnified image of an Asian man's right eye. She wondered if it was Daniel Aquino's eye, and how Root had gotten hold of a high res image that could fool a retinal scanner. Then the door slid open, and a wave of stale air washed over her. 

"There's been blood in here," Shaw said immediately, and moved in to check for danger. The area was walled with glass that gave a wide view of the city. "Lots of blood. Three years old, easy." She puffed out a breath. "Smells like ER on a Friday night." She nodded for Root to come in. The door slid closed behind them, and Shaw wheeled on it with her gun up, but Root touched her shoulder, unworried. 

"It's on automatic," she said. "They have them in clean rooms where they manufacture computer components. They don't stay open for very long, so there's less chance of contamination." She pointed to a number pad beside the door. "Those are easy to crack. Won't take me a second when we go." 

Shaw saw oil residue around four of the numbers on the pad, and relaxed. She'd be able to figure a four-digit code by herself, and that was comforting. She holstered her gun and went back to the centre of the area, where there were three long examination chairs.

They were padded, leather-covered and fitted with restraints. Shaw put her face close to a headrest: sweat, some panic, some boredom. She didn't know the man who had last been cuffed to this chair, but he'd been there long enough for his scent to have sunk into the leather and stayed there for some years. Twenty-four hours, Shaw estimated, a day and a night of constant contact with that surface. The same for the second chair: this one had been a woman, again, nobody that Shaw knew. The third chair she did know: John Reese. He'd been one of the last people here before this facility had been shuttered. She wondered whether he'd told Harold about it. 

That made her want to check the supervisor's booth, a walled off area with a glass observation window. Root was already there, scooting on a desk chair from terminal to terminal with a frustrated expression and a fistful of thumb drives. 

"They've done a clean wipe," said Root. "Competently. I'm only getting fragments of data." 

Shaw shut the door behind her to stop the air mixing, and closed her eyes, reaching for the remaining scent trails that had been left behind when they closed this place down. 

"Hersh," she said. "That's not a surprise. He's a good clean-up man." 

"They've certainly sent him to clean up after you," said Root, her fingers flying over a keyboard. 

Shaw laughed. "Well, if they've brought Hersh in, Wilson's fucked," she said. "Hersh doesn't tolerate idiots well." She ran her fingers down a wall, pausing where there was a tiny divot.

"Bullet hole?" said Root. She had one of the CPUs open on the desk now, manually pulling out parts and stowing them in her many pockets. 

"Tranq dart," said Shaw. "Why are they tranquilising Sentinels? And where are the Guides? All I'm getting here are scientists, military and the Sentinels." 

Root shrugged. "It doesn't sound like it was a great program, from what I've read. Let's face it, there aren't many military medical programs that are good." 

That irked Shaw, because Cascade was good, at least by the time she'd come to it. She knew that was because they'd built it on top of earlier generations, and that those early Sentinels had had it rough. Maybe this was part of what made the project better? She left Root to her dissection of the computers, and went into the main area to figure what kind of procedures they were carrying out here. 

She switched on a patient monitor, but it was fairly standard: BP, pulse, oxygen saturation. There were extra leads hanging from the monitor, though: this thing had been connected to an EEG. That made sense; she'd had a fair few EEGs when her abilities had been activated. There was nothing suspicious about that. 

Root tapped on the glass, and Shaw looked up. "Are they wi-fi enabled?" she said. The glass was thick enough that her voice shouldn't have been audible, but Shaw had no problems. She checked the display and nodded. 

"Yeah," she said. "They all are, these days, so you can download data to tablets or whatever." 

Root gave her a wide and mad smile, and left the booth. "I'll bet they didn't clear the cache on those things," she said. 

Shaw sat herself down on the examination chair, despite the crawling of her skin, and tried to imagine what kind of data they were collecting. The chair was unusually solid, even when she wriggled around to get comfortable. She flipped over onto her belly with a wince, and hung her head down to see if it had a hydraulic lift, then stopped, surprised. The damn thing was fixed in place; there was no way to adjust height or angle or position at all. 

"What's so vital about this setup that you have to bolt the chairs into position?" Shaw waved her arms to indicate the chairs, the observation booth and the window. 

Root stopped with her fingers on a thumb drive and stared at Shaw, then at the cityscape. Shaw heard her heart accelerate as she stepped forward and put her palms on the glass. 

"What?" said Shaw. She couldn't see anything significant, but there must be something because exhilaration poured from Root's skin, that rose and sea salt arousal, amped up by adrenaline and exultation. 

"Do you know what that is over there?" Root pointed out a particular building, tall and crystal-faceted, lit with soft yellow light and feathered with an array of satellite dishes and antennae. It was dead centre in the middle of the vista. If Shaw had the right rifle, if the wind was with her, she could have planted a bullet through one of those glossy black-tinted windows. 

She tried to orient herself with the city, gazing from the Hudson to the East River. The building wasn't one of the famous landmarks, nor one of the high security ones she knew as potential targets for terrorism. She couldn’t imagine why it would have been a target for any agency, let alone Cascade. 

Root's voice sang with triumph, though her answer didn't make any sense to Shaw. "That's IFT Plaza," she said. "That's where they built it." 

“Built what?” Shaw said. Root had that expression, the one that meant there would be no straight answers without elaborate games, and Shaw didn’t have time to play riddles with her. She had a meeting to make and revenge to mete out. She reached over to her, made a grab for her collar and reeled her in close.

“Tell me what’s going on,” she said, her face so close to Root’s that their foreheads brushed. That same frisson she’d felt in the lobby bubbled up inside: a heightened awareness of Root’s elation, a sweet/salt longing. She felt goose pimples shiver along her arms. 

Root’s breath came fast and shallow; Shaw watched her lips move, aware of every tiny crease and fold of Root’s mouth. She blinked and reason shifted, so that the obvious thing to do was to press their mouths together. She knew this was stupid – was dangerous, was a thing of madness mid-mission – but the kiss existed in some other place, somewhere Shaw had never been, where emotion broke in waves against her body. She only stopped when one of Root’s phones chimed softly in her pocket. 

Root was gratifyingly rattled by the intensity of that kiss: her hands trembled as she scrolled through a number of incomprehensible menus on the screen. “We have to go,” she said. “They’re here, in the lobby.” She showed Shaw a screen grab from the cameras, Wilson had the security guard bent over the desk with an arm twisted up behind him. Other goons, heavily armed, rushed past him towards the elevator bank. 

Shaw grabbed Root’s wrist and dragged her towards the exit. The four numbers most commonly used on the keypad gleamed with oil. There were 24 possible combinations, and she started with the first one. 

“Wait!” said Root, alarmed. 

It was too late, though. Shaw knew the moment she touched the keypad that she’d been tricked; the oil was too viscous to have come from fingertips. She’d been set up, and in a way that only a Sentinel would fall for. 

“Shit,” she said, and drew her weapon. The door slid open, and the aerosol misters activated. Before the wave of volatile oil could reach her, she shot the misters out. The oil still fell, but instead of a fine mist that would coat everything, it rained straight down from the outlets. Then the peppermint was in her throat, and she gagged. 

“Come on,” said Root. “If you’re fast, you can get through and out to the other side. We don’t have to worry about subtlety now. Can you get the lock?” 

Shaw’s eyes were starting to water, but she brought up her weapon and sought a target. Suddenly her vision cleared, and she had the layout of the change room down in her mind, accurate to millimetres, as if it had been digitally mapped. This was coming from Root, she realised, as she took the lock off with two shots. They were through and into the silent, padded corridor, running towards the elevator bank, feet sinking into the soft flooring. 

“The elevator…” Shaw started to say, when the walls came alight. The mnemonic came together, hilariously late: birthday cake and acrid metal meant sparklers, sparklers meant magnesium. Aquino had inlayed magnesium into the walls in a close-patterned grid that now burned green/red/white through Shaw’s eyelids. It was bright even for Root – there was time for Shaw to see Root throw her arm up against her face – but to Shaw, it was alive on her nerves: fire, colour, sound, just like the explosion in Berlin except back then she had courted the sensory oblivion, and now it was going to get her killed. 

Then there were warm hands on hers, leading her somewhere. Shaw followed, somehow able to discern sea salt and rose through the sensory turmoil. She had the sensation of moving upwards in an elevator, all the while leaning against the rough wool of Root’s coat, breathing rose and calm and safety. 

She woke with a start, in the musty embrace of an aged armchair upholstered in faded green velvet. The room was quiet, save for the purring of a moth-eaten black cat on the sofa opposite, and the gentle snores of the elderly woman on whose lap the cat sat. Root was nowhere to be seen, and there was only the faintest trace of rose in the air. 

She moved quietly, checking doors, to find this was an apartment in the building across the street – how Root had gotten them there in one piece was now a mystery for another day. The woman whose place it seemed to be was elderly, and everywhere was cluttered with books piled upon books, tea-cups and teapots. In the hall, Shaw could smell pot roast, so she looked for a kitchen. There, she found a note, scrawled on the back of a yellow-edged recipe card for cornbread. 

_Hey you,_ it said, in spiky capitals. 

_That was fun! We should do it again some time. I have places to be now, though, and sadly, they're places you probably shouldn't go right now._

_Mrs Cardona's granddaughter is around your size, by the way. She keeps a few things in the closet in the spare bedroom; I thought they'd be handy for your big night._

_(I gave Mrs Cardona fifteen miligrams of diazepam in her tea; she was a bit irrationally upset about us bothering her. She should be fine, but I guess you'll know better than me.)_

_Kisses! R._

Shaw screwed the card up, then thought the better of it, and tucked it away in her jacket. She went to take Mrs Cardona's pulse. When she was sure that the poor woman was only asleep and not in a sedative coma, she turned off the oven, and went to the spare room. She had a gala to dress for.


	9. Chapter 9

**2011**

John should have realised something was up when the camera on the roof of the parking structure died. He was stupidly relaxed: two of the four numbers had survived, their mother's house would be saved, and he was on his way back to Finch, so when he heard the servo in the camera housing shut down, he gave it a single glance and moved on. Maintenance issues.

Mark's heartbeat, though, that was recognisable even through the roar of the SUV's engine. He'd brought Carter along, which was smart. He'd likely need a hostage, if he couldn't rope John back under his control. 

John turned to face them both. There was no cover here, none, he was totally exposed. It wasn't going to end well. He took a breath and assessed his options: get Carter out alive, and don't lead them to Harold. That would be the best he could hope for now. He let the breath go, at peace with the idea that he'd probably be dead soon. He'd had longer than he expected, and some truly happy moments. And now he had a job to do.

He watched the car pull up, not really sure what would happen now. Would Mark be able to reassert power over him? Push his balance out of kilter and drop John on the asphalt? Or would the bond he'd made with Harold keep his mind safe? He hoped Carter realised the danger she was in, because if she witnessed anything Cascade, she was dead. 

The first mental lasso came before Mark had opened his mouth. It was a tentative attempt to sound out John's Sentinel status, and it slid off easily, giving nothing away. Mark wasn't pleased with the result, John could tell. He waited, let Mark scope out the fact that John was clearly functional and that his senses were under control, without medication, without booze. Beside Mark, Carter glanced from one to the other, and John could see her instincts prickling. Good, he thought, get the hell out of here. 

"Hello John," said Mark, affable, open. Another mental lasso came, this time a direct attempt to overload his inner ear, trigger vertigo and send John flat to the ground. John felt it land and slide away. He was sure Mark felt it too, because he narrowed his gaze. 

"Mark," said John. They were keeping things normal on the surface, then, which was good for Carter, because it meant that Mark believed she still could be useful.

Mark put a hand in his pocket, and John tensed to act, but his pocket was empty. He heard Mark's fingers brush the silk lining before he spoke. "I'm glad to see you're still alive," said Mark, and that wasn't a lie at all. John was a precious resource, and getting him back under control would be Mark's main priority.

"I'll bet you are." John waited for the inevitable attack. Carter was up on the tips of her toes, ready to run. She obviously knew there was another conversation between the two men, inaudible to her. If she survived, she'd have questions, and now it would be Finch who had to deal with them. 

A lot of things weren't right here, though: Mark's mental volleys were coming constantly, attacks on John's sight, on hearing, on muscle control. None of them took, but Mark kept trying instead of switching to weapons designed to incapacitate a Sentinel: flares, infrasound, butyric acid. Why would he rely solely on mental attacks? 

"I'm surprised to see you in New York City." Mark could still talk up a storm while he hacked away at John's control. "I thought you'd get yourself a cabin in the woods. Somewhere quiet. Montana, maybe." 

"What do you want, Mark?" 

John realised why the attacks had to be targeted: the sound of Mark's fingers in his pocket, that brush of skin on silk, it was a signal for a Sentinel, and not for John. Mark couldn't use a flare, or anything with an area effect, because it would put his Sentinel out of action. 

His Sentinel. John fought a flare of irrational jealousy, straight from the hindbrain, the urge to tear his own replacement to pieces. He had to think straight, he had to be better than animal instinct. What wouldn't Mark expect? Vulnerability. 

Despite the risk, John threw out feelers: sound, scent, and the snarling awareness that one Sentinel feels for another. When he located the other, (far left, up on a wall, poised behind a high-powered rifle) he stood up straight, and visualised holding that kid down on the ground, standing over him, making him bare his throat. Pheromones would take care of the rest. He was rewarded a moment later with a low snarl, sub-vocal but perfectly audible to him, drifting down from the sniper's nest on the next roof. Mark heard it too, over his comms, and he gave John a vile glare. 

"It's time to come in," said Mark. "The slate's been wiped clean."

"You know that'll never happen." John coiled his senses in, and reached deep into himself. He knew how to hurt Mark; he'd always known. He took the next assault Mark hurled and lobbed right back at him, with a nasty twist of his own. It had been a while but the pathways were still there, and John felt the attack land with a visceral thud. 

Mark gasped and staggered back, and on the roof, the rifle cocked. John's rage flared, and he irrationally turned for the Sentinel on the roof, so the shot meant for his chest caught him above the hip, and the one following it hit his thigh. In front of him, Mark folded with a grunt, feeling the same pain through the brief link from John's attack. Mark wouldn't bleed, not like the warm pulse where John pressed his palm against his guts, but he hoped it hurt at Mark least half as much as it hurt him. 

Running was instinctive; John didn't even really need to think, his legs had him standing as best he could, and moving out of range of the sniper's scope. He heard Carter's boots pelting for cover. Good. Then he was in the stairwell, and his brain started to catch up with his body. 

The bleeding was bad. The bullet had probably nicked something big in his abdomen. The one in his leg was mechanically annoying and would slow him down, but the one in his gut would kill him. He tapped his earpiece and Harold's voice was right there with him. He sighed into the relief this gave him, let it soothe a little of the pain, but only the pain. Better to leave the adrenaline flooding until John was done running. 

"I've been trying to call, you've been compromised… Are you hurt?" Harold's voice became high-pitched towards the end of his sentence; John could hear rising panic in his voice in Sentinel-enhanced multi-coloured nauseating detail. 

John hobbled down step after step. "Am I broadcasting? That's bad. Things are a mess, here, Harold, I'm sorry." The wheels of the SUV were screaming down ramp after ramp. He wondered if Mark had stopped to pick up his Sentinel sniper, or if the kid had to find his own way back to base. 

"Carter sold you out. Your former employees got to her." Harold was driving. Too fast, John worried, he could hear the suspension springs complaining, the high-pitched note of the car. They'd made out in that car, more than once. That made him smile. It had been so good, with Harold, with a real Guide. 

"Tell her it's not her fault, will you? She'll want to blame herself, but they're clever. They know how to manipulate someone." He was getting very cold. 

"You can tell her, John. I'm not far away. I want you to get to the ground floor." 

The idea of Harold under Mark's care energised him. "No, Harold, you stay away. They can't know about you. They can't." His voice was doing odd things, dropping out, trembling, like the shaking he felt inside. The stairs were endless, and he kept turning corners, kept moving his feet though they were heavy as lead. He stopped midway between floors to check: the SUV was still howling down towards ground level. Carter was a floor above him: her boots were easy to identify, as was the ground-covering way she ran. 

The other Sentinel was near, John could smell his sweat mixing with gunpowder residue on his fingertips. He was one floor down, still and quiet, listening just as John was. John was suddenly very aware of his blood falling onto the concrete stairs from between his fingers, how each splash echoed around the stairwell. He started to zone, back to previous shootings, blood soaking through his fatigues into the sand, blood pooling in an expensive Italian loafer while Kara laughed. He tried to shake out of it, because the door below him was opening, slowly and quietly, though he could hear the high-pitched whine of the hinge. Needs oil, he told himself, sliding to the floor. His legs folded so neatly. His gun was incredibly heavy as he lifted it. He bared his teeth at the Sentinel out of instinct, but now, as death approached him, he only felt sad for him. 

"Don't let him fuck you," he said, still trying to get his gun high enough to sight. "He's got a thing for the new kids." 

The man hesitated, confusion and guilt showing on his face, then looked upwards, raising his gun. John heard boots approaching the door above him. Carter. 

"Stay back!" He closed his eyes and telegraphed as hard as he could their relative positions, so hard that Finch, still driving, give a soft hiss of discomfort. The door opened a crack, then there was an object, dark and spinning, flying towards the two of them. Carter's voice was loud through the closed door, perfectly clear to two Sentinels. "Grenade!" 

Someone tentatively pulled at John's mind, like a tug on a guide rope through fog. John reached for the contact, confused but unafraid. This wasn't Mark's heavy hand, nor was it Harold. Harold would never be as literal as to send him an image of a cell phone tumbling end over end. 

Below him, the Sentinel acted on reflex, throwing an arm up to protect his face and turning away from the moving object. Knowing it wasn't a grenade, John ignored it, and raised his gun those last few millimetres to put a shot into the Sentinel's gun arm. 

The Sentinel sagged against the wall, fired in John's direction but missed. John began the interminable journey to raise his arm again for another shot, but the man clawed the door open and disappeared back into the main part of the building. 

As soon as the door had closed behind him, Carter clattered down the stairs, her boots crunching over the broken glass of her phone. She picked up the sim card, and kicked the remains of the casing over the edge of the stairs. They scattered at the bottom of the stairwell, lost amidst leaves and garbage.

"If they catch you helping me, they'll kill you," he said. "You need to get out of here." She stood above him, unthreading her silk scarf from around her neck. 

"Planning on it." She pressed the scarf to the bullet wound in his abdomen, mercilessly hard. "I knew where you were, clear as on a map. I knew you understood what I was doing with my phone," she said, and heaved him to his feet, putting his arm over her shoulder. "We're going to talk about that later, somewhere people aren't shooting at you." 

"No such place." John hobbled along beside her. His vision greyed out; the air was too thin and too cold. He thought he heard rotors nearby, a chopper pulling away from a drop site, felt his pack heavy on his back dragging him down. "Fucking air support dropped us too high. Now we gotta hike down," he said. "Probably get eaten by a bear." 

Carter's footsteps were level and brisk. "After what I've seen tonight, bears wouldn't surprise me, but it's not happening on my watch, mister. Now, get moving. Last man home's got KP for a week." 

They burst through a door and John stared in confusion, wondering where his unit had gone, where the mountains were. Then Finch was there, his hands on John's body, his mind enveloping John, and John gave a gasp of relief. 

"We'll talk," said Carter. "Tell John I'm sorry."

"I'm right here," said John, though nobody seemed to be listening to him. Maybe he had imagined the words. He wasn't sure at this point, so he rested his head on Harold's shoulder, breathed in the smell of him, the warmth of him. 

"Thank you," said Harold. "Please be careful." 

Then John was in the car, and it was quiet. Harold's mind was all around him, the smell of old books and clean shirts was in every breath, and he didn't care if he died now, because Harold was safe and the car was moving. 

"We're going to find help," Harold told him as the car flew over speed bumps and past the boom gate. 

John lay in the back seat, wrapped in Harold's presence, and let the darkness take him. It was all right. Harold was here. 

**2013**

Shaw worried that Harold's good work had been undone by whatever amateur hour rummaging Root had done while she was out of it, but the moment she stepped out of the apartment building she realised she was fine. More than fine: Harold's fine-tuning had left Shaw's senses calm and calibrated, sharp and focused. The trip across town was effortless, and when she entered the fundraiser, she immediately identified her target. It was as if he were the only one in colour, or she and he were two magnets pulling her across the room to him. 

She walked with purpose and the crowd parted around her, which was right, because she was a knife flying through the air, towards a well-dressed and portly man with an intelligent face and soft pink hands. The only time she paused was when she crossed a line of scent that was Wilson's weird cinnamon gum. Good. I'm coming for you, Wilson. Hope you're enjoying the hors d'oeuvres, because that's the last thing going in your gut that isn't a hollow point. 

The man smiled and raised his martini glass to her. "Straight to my table, I see. I'd ask how that was possible, but I know Cascade. I guess now Cascade knows me, too." 

God, thanks to Harold's help, she could read him like a fucking roadmap: she caught Wilson's scent (gunpowder and cinnamon), a score of confident white paper pushers in nice suits, his driver was using cocaine, he had brushed a waitress's arm. A tall woman, someone who scared him, with basic but expensive cosmetics and old-fashioned hairspray had put her hand right on his shoulder, pressed hard enough that he could still feel the marks. And the person who had helped him into his coat had cool, long fingers and smelled of rose petals and the sea. Oh, he was in trouble, and in more ways than one. 

"You're not Control," she said. He was a facilitator – a good one, maybe, but never destined to be the top of the food chain. 

He smiled, one of those gentle smiles they give you as the firing squad is lining up. "Sadly not, but I'm as close as you'll get tonight. Now what? Do I get the usual treatment?" 

There was movement behind her, but she didn't even need to turn her head. Cinnamon and gunpowder to the left, low-level thug to the right. "No, I think we should all go somewhere and have a chat. I've got some questions; I'm sure you do too."

They had cleared a private atrium for this, overlooking a balcony to the party below. Wilson's choice, she was willing to bet, designed to set her on edge, presuming that without a Guide to help her filter, her concentration would be constantly divided. Shaw glanced once over the balcony, and then, with deliberate calm, turned her back on it. Wilson's fucking smug expression faltered a little, and she smiled.

"Here's the thing that's bugging me," she said. "Apart from the obvious, of course. Why the hell do you hold us all back? You have to know that we'd be better operators without the suppressants and those weak bonds."

The man gave a gentle shrug. "It's fairly obvious: never make a weapon that you can't control," he said. "If we let you express your abilities to the maximum, sooner or later you start asking questions. That is outside the remit of a weapon. Or a soldier, for that matter." 

She shook her head. "Yeah, well, unlike you, I am a soldier. I'll admit freely that I didn't give a fuck what you asked me to do or why, not until you did something so stupid not even I can ignore it. Cole was loyal, not because he was a soldier but because he believed in the project. He was proud of making the world safer, he could have done anything you asked. But you never asked, you didn't negotiate. You just sent in the hit squad, and you need to be better than that." 

The man conceded with a nod. "In all fairness, you weren't supposed to be here to argue the point." 

"Cole broke the rules," said Wilson. "You're on the hook for that as much as him." 

Shaw considered him, up and down, with an expression of disgust. "How's that going for you, Wilson? How many more teams do you think they'll let you get killed?" she said. 

"So, you're here for revenge, then?" the man asked, mildly. "I could understand that."

"No, I came here to help finish Cole's job," she said, and reached for her purse. She paused as the goons drew their weapons, and showed her hands were empty. "Someone upstairs is experimenting on Sentinels, and you need to know. Cole loved the project. He'd want you to have his data on the Aquino case." She took out the thumb drive, a tiny silver spanner, ridiculous amidst all this splendour. 

"Why all this set-up?" the man said. "Why not give that to Wilson?" 

Shaw's lip curled. "After watching him screw up over and over on this thing, I doubt Wilson could find his way out of a paper bag." 

"Fair enough," he said, and took the thumb drive. "Hersh was right. You are a good soldier. This wasn't about getting revenge after all." 

Shaw moved with Sentinel speed, faster than any of them could track. Her gun slapped into her palm with a satisfying sound. "A good soldier does both," she said, and Wilson went down with two red holes in his forehead. 

She didn't expect to feel better, and she didn't, but things fell into place and were finished. Shaw strode out of the building with all the loose ends tied and no obligations to anyone. She didn't know what came next. She hadn't expected there to be a next, honestly. 

She waited to cross, standing amongst a whole bunch of people who had no idea what kind people were driving the world they lived in. Okay, maybe it was cliché but the city really did feel alive right now: breathing a million breaths at once, all those heartbeats clustered around her, and the gentle hum of voices, all of it cresting and falling without overwhelming her. It would fade, this control that Harold had given her, but while it lasted it was wonderful. The lady to her right had been holding a newborn. The guy beside her had his fingertips on the crisp cellophane of a new box of condoms. People weren't so bad. 

The only warning she had was the slick noise of a syringe uncapping. Hersh knew her well, and had her pinned while the needle jammed into her side. She tasted resin and smoke and saw visions of inked paper burning before she even picked up Hersh's scent: plain soap, shoe polish, hire car. 

"I'm sorry, Shaw. You were a good operative." 

Aconitine moved like an arrow: Shaw couldn't do anything but totter a few steps forward while her heart went into overdrive. Then crushing pain in her chest blossomed over her whole body and she fell. All the while, Harold's gift kept everything sorted and carefully in place: Italian leather shoes stepped over her; a woman with flour in her clothes screamed; someone dialled 911 on an iPhone, they'd bought the silicone case in Hong Kong; she was rolled into the recovery position by a woman with more books than friends. Or maybe the books were her friends, Shaw thought, hysterically. Harold's work was unravelling, and with it her grip on reality. Surprisingly, that was the most painful thing of all. Dying in a scramble of sounds, scents and textures was horrifying to a Sentinel.

Then there was rose and saltwater in the back of her throat. Her open eyes met those of Root, crouched in front of her.

"Shh," she said, and reached out to touch Shaw's cheek with two fingers. "I've got you." Shaw felt her this time, gentle and deft, sliding around Shaw's mind and holding it still. 

The discordant panic settled into quiet. Then something odd happened, maybe because her brain was dying, maybe because so many people had been in Shaw's head over the last day. The connection flipped and she saw into Root's mind: a convoluted lattice of thinking, lit with data streams that leapt all over the place unpredictably. Underpinning the whole thing was passion, ruby red and intense, and it was to that intensity that Shaw held her final seconds of consciousness.

In Shaw's mnemonic library, atropine was tart purple plums and candle wax. Dog slobber stood on its own merits. Shaw woke inside a half-zipped body bag, with a dog's tongue washing her face, and honestly, she'd had worse mornings. 

She was in a stationary ambulance. She had some vague memory of strangling a paramedic, so she peered over the side of the gurney to see if there was a body, but there was no sign of him except for the faint trace of the perfume his Russian girlfriend wore. She flopped back, took a few deep breaths and relished how good breathing was. 

The cemetery was a surprise, but the air was crisp and cool, even if the sky was overhung with clouds. John and Harold waited for her a little distant from the ambulance, and she stomped in their direction with a scowl. She was far enough from the city that the sirens and bustle and reek were remnants only, hanging about her clothes and her memory, already dissipating on the breeze. 

All of that calm and gratitude melted away into rage once she was in range of the two of them. They were so pleased with themselves. Shaw wanted irrationally to shoot them. A little bit. 

John silently offered her a bottle of water, which she ignored. It was ungraceful, but they were so damn smug that all her anger and frustration crystallised there. She drew on them, slowly and calmly so that John would know this wasn't the irrational anger that came from being close to another Sentinel. Now that she was thinking about it, that territorial reaction was as calm and settled as she'd ever experienced. That was probably Harold's influence, and that made her even angrier. That and the fact that John didn't react to her weapon, didn't even push Harold behind him. So infuriatingly smug, the two of them. 

John shrugged, and put the bottle in his pocket. "You're not going to shoot us, Shaw." 

"It was the best way," said Harold, a little apologetically. "You know they wanted you dead, and now, essentially, you are. And before you start to bristle at the idea that you owe us anything, please understand we don't expect anything in return. You're under no obligation, Ms Shaw. We're merely pleased that you're alive and well."

John didn't bother to hide a wry smile, and she wheeled on him, glaring. How dare he be so pleased about this? How dare he be proprietary about her being alive! 

Harold continued. "I know, and I'm sorry, but I won't apologise for saving your life, Ms Shaw, when I believe that the world is a better place for having you in it." He was doing that thing she hated in Guides, when they skipped ahead in the conversation because they could read your next thought before you'd voiced it. Somehow, despite rummaging in her brain, they never figured out that Shaw did not appreciate people doing that sort of thing. 

John obviously felt the same way, because he gave Harold a quick glance, one of those silent messages she'd seen between them before. "Shaw, you'll need someone to help with the Cascade stuff," he said. "That'll be to be hard to do on the run." 

Shaw considered that Washington paper pusher, and the long fingered woman who had slipped his coat over his shoulders, smoothed it into position. DC was probably the last place they'd be searching for Shaw, if they even knew to search. And Root had information she needed, about Cascade, about Northern Lights. 

"I'll make it work," she said. "I don't like being tied to other people." 

John's expression was dubious. "Might have signed up to the wrong project, then," he said. 

"Yeah, well, some of us managed fine without putting on a collar and leash," she said. Look at you, she said to John, silently. Less than a foot from your Guide, watching his every move. You and the slobber monster there, you're both owned. "Like I said, I'm not chaining myself to anyone."

"That's as may be," said Harold. "And I agree that Project Cascade has definitely encouraged a greater reliance on Guides than is strictly necessary. But we are necessary. Your senses won't return to normal just because you will it so." 

"It's still my decision," she said. "My decision and my baggage to deal with." She glanced over her shoulder at the ambulance, already planning how far she could get in that before she had to dump it. 

"Before you go," Harold said, proffering his card again. "You never know, it might be useful." 

Shaw considered it, remembered the linen texture of it under her fingertips in that quiet room at the top of the city. They had helped her through the worst of things, when all she wanted was a bloody revenge and a quick death. She reached out and took the card, gave Harold a nod, and tucked it in her pocket. 

As she drove away, she heard John speak, finally. "You don't want me to wear a leash, do you?" She snorted, knowing full well that John could hear it, and turned the ambulance towards the interstate.


	10. Chapter 10

**2012**

Standing beside Alicia Corwin’s body, John experienced one single moment of whiteout panic before focus came back to him, hung on the framework of Harold’s architecture and the strength of their bond. He would find Harold and bring him home. And if Harold had been harmed, John would make Root pay. 

Harold had driven with the windows down, so John could smell the gunpowder and Harold's brief spike of fear when Corwin was killed. Before that, John knew he had been angry, that particular cold anger that Harold reserved for people who abused their power. Then Caroline Turing had stepped up to the rear passenger window, shot Alicia Corwin point blank in the back of the head, then rolled her body out of the car like a bag of trash. 

Turing's scent was everywhere, except that it was now exuberant and sickly-sweet, quite different to the measured calm she had shown during their pursuit and escape. It was unusual for someone’s body chemistry to change so entirely between one persona and another, and John hunted for a few minutes longer, trying to determine if it was something she had done deliberately (indicating a knowledge of Sentinels and Guides) or just the strength of her personality at work. It was inconclusive, so, instead, he followed the car as far as he could, losing it in traffic as soon as they’d left the treatment plant. Then he took a few deep breaths, let the sound of waves clear his thoughts, and called Carter. 

Sitting crouched forward in the passenger seat, John struggled to keep his senses capped while Carter briefed him. He itched with agitation and a need to move, but Carter's voice, as always, was a solid grounding point for him. 

"Fusco's pulled a couple of favours with some buddies on highway patrol; they've got Harold's car on an unofficial bolo. That means they won't intercept. They'll just give Fusco a call." She glanced sideways at John's dubious expression. "It's the best I can do, John. I don't have Harold's resources, and the two of us can't canvass every exit off the island on our own." 

"We don't need to," said John, and directed her towards IFT Plaza. 

At the parking garage, Carter stopped at the closed door and held out her hand for a card to swipe. John ducked low to look at the camera monitoring the check-in bay, thinking hard about getting out and punching the door, if the building or the Machine refused to co-operate with his search. After a minute, the door rolled open and the boom gate lifted. 

"Okay," said Carter. "Where do we park in here?" 

The last time John had been in the building, he and Harold had been on foot. He directed Carter towards the CEO parking, figuring Harold would have something worked out. The executive elevator opened at their approach. 

"Thanks," said John, as they entered. 

Carter gave him a sideways glance. "You ready to tell me who you're talking to? Or is this whole thing still one big tap dance around the truth?" 

John gazed up at the camera. "It's complicated," he said. He put his palm on the black glass panel, heard it activate and scan. The elevator doors closed and then they were moving up. 

"Complicated like, 'I magically know when people's lives are in danger' or complicated like 'Carter, I know you saw inside my head but you're only getting the vaguest explanation for that and then never mention it again'?" 

He smiled a little at that, despite the situation. "You mean the time you got me shot?" 

Carter let her breath out with a hiss. "You can't hold that over me forever. But I'll say it again: I am sorry. I'm law enforcement; I have to trust official channels first." 

"You used to be Army," John said. "I bet you wouldn't have said that back then." 

"Hah, no," said Carter. "Past me would kick my ass. And your ass, too." 

John couldn't stop a short huff of laughter from escaping. Here in the building, where he could focus better, he was already feeling more hopeful. The elevator skimmed past floors: cafeteria, legal offices, computer labs, cubicle floors, more cubicles. "I was part of a program," he said. "I don't want to give you names and titles, but it works like this: I've got enhanced senses, but using them messes me up. My – what did you call them, when we first met? Sidekick. My sidekick helps me stay level, helps me sort out the information I've gathered, figures out what to do with it." 

Carter leaned against the elevator wall. "And that's Finch?" 

John nodded. Then he shrugged. "That and more." Despite the influence of the building, he ached for Harold, and hoped he wasn't in pain or afraid. That was a stupid thing to think about, even here where he felt calmest. Before he started to zone, he reached out, took Carter's hand, and concentrated on her voice, staring at the grey-carpeted floor of the elevator.

To Carter's credit, she didn't flinch or pull back. Instead, she kept talking, low and steady. "This means I'm what? Like Finch? I mean, that's what happened in the stairwell when you got shot, isn't it? It was intense, like I had to find a path through a fog to where you were." 

"Like Finch, like Mark," said John. "You're one of the ones that can help me sort things." Even in talking about it, with skin contact Carter was instinctively reaching for John's mind. He tried to make way for her. He was getting good at working with different minds, apparently, though he wished this were under different circumstances. They should have practiced, he realised, before a crisis. Carter should have known what he was and how to work with him. 

The elevator doors opened, on the same space he'd seen that day with Harold. A little tidier, this time, with cables neatly looped and server racks pushed together against the windows. John let go of Carter's hand and stepped out, careful to keep his back to the ominous north-facing window.

"What do you need me to do?" asked Carter. "Why do we need to do it up here?" 

John sat down with his back to a shelf. "I'm going to search for Finch," he said. "That means I'll be stretched out thin, so I need you to be an anchor, help me find my way back." He waved an arm across the room. "This was Harold's place. It means something, to the way I am, the way it all works. I don't know why, but it gives me the best chance to find him." 

Carter sat cross-legged opposite him. "Okay. Let's do this." 

John nodded. "When I need you, I'll put my hand out," he said. "You take it, and I'll do the rest." 

"Got it," said Carter. "You go find him." 

John closed his eyes and let the room settle around him. This was where the Machine was born, where Harold had poured so much of himself into creating it, thinking all the time about protecting the world. 

_No birth is perfect. No birth is easy._

The words were so quiet and so integrated with John's mind that if the context hadn't been so alien, he would have thought that they were his own. Or Harold's, if Harold wasn't in Root's dubious company. So, this must be the Machine, he decided, this voice that threw words into his mind from time to time. It had happened at the country club, and several times since, whenever John was in a heightened emotional state, in pain or overwhelmed. It rarely made sense; it was always abstract concepts, whispered softly in the back of his mind. It was contact, though, and John needed it desperately now. 

"I need to find him," he said. "Help me." 

There were no more words, but he had an immediate longing for Harold's presence, for the sound of his voice and the feeling of his fingers on the back of John's neck. He reached for Harold mentally, the way he would if he were in the other room or coming up the stairs in the library. This was his bond; this sensation was the connection between him and Harold, and Harold was out there somewhere. If John and Harold were to change places, if it were Harold here waiting to receive information from John, he'd see… he'd see… 

The smell of rental car in every breath: plastic air vents and upholstery shampoo. Passenger seat, upright and awkward. Someone driving, long brunette curls, a rose perfume; it was difficult to see them, painful to turn in that direction. Pain in Harold's back, familiar and aching, different to the sharp sting in his palm. John clenched his fists, and anger tinted everything a dark red. 

"Hey," Carter said, from far, far away. "There's no time for that now, John. You need a cool head. Think like a sniper, take a breath, find your shot." Her voice was distant, but calming in exactly the right way: soldier to soldier, no sympathy for the loss he had experienced, but a cold expectation that he would do the job right. He let his shoulders fall, waited for the vision to stabilise again, and like a sniper seeking a target, sunk himself into it.

"Look out the window, Harold, give me something," John willed, and Harold, knowing or not, obliged. It was an interstate, four lanes, traffic was light. A sign flashed past, they were on I-95, and as the turn-offs flew past, Harold crossed options off a long list of possible destinations. They were pointed towards DC, though. John watched a little longer to confirm they were veering onto the Turnpike, then a little longer again for the reassurance of seeing Harold's hands crossed in his lap. 

"I'm coming to help you," he told Harold, and hoped that the essence of it came through, even if the words themselves couldn't. Then, when he felt the images thinning out like fog in sun, he put up his hand. Carter took it, wrapped her fingers around it, and, with the mental resilience of a cop and a single mother, she simply refused to let go. John hauled hard against her, felt her take the weight of his mind, shift to accommodate it, and hold still. John came back to his body with the feeling of having climbed a dozen flights of stairs: exhausted but triumphant. He sagged against the shelving, and grinned at Carter. 

"Tell Fusco to take the Jersey Turnpike," he said. "I know where they're going." 

Carter's expression was one of wonder and determination. "Let's go get him back," she said, and squeezed his hand. 

**2013**

Leon and Fusco pushed the stretcher into the ambulance, and closed the doors. John watched from the opposite corner, listening as Doctor Madani ordered them around like scrub nurses, resuscitating Shaw. Then, over the top of all the noise came a steady thump-thump, a strong heartbeat that could only be Shaw. Nobody would claw their way back to life with such certain determination. Leon bolted from the ambulance to barf against the wall, then, at Fusco's sharp bark, climbed unwillingly behind the wheel and turned over the engine. 

John tapped his earpiece. "She's fine. They're on the road, Finch," he said, and smiled at Harold's sigh of relief. 

"I'm so glad – that was an extremely risky procedure," Harold said. "Shall I collect you on the way to the cemetery?" 

John tilted his head to one side: someone was gasping and sobbing in the dark corner of the alley behind him. A familiar scent drifted down towards him, and he stepped off the street and into the darkness. "Give me a few minutes, Finch," he said. 

He found Root leaning against a filthy brick wall, bent double and gasping for breath, her long arms wrapped around herself. John heard her heart, skipping and thumping against her chest. 

He walked closer, and stood, watching her. She looked like hell: hair in her mouth, snot and tears blurring her careful make-up, pale and nauseous. He took a delicate breath in: Leon wasn't the only one who had hurled their guts out tonight. 

"I'll bet you're enjoying this!" Root gasped at him, angry and terrified. "Karma coming back to kick my ass, and you get to see it all. What could be better?" More sobs wracked her, and she pressed her fists to her temples with a moan. Pain and confusion wiped away her sarcasm, and she stared up in agony. "Will it stop?" 

"It'll stop," said John. "It's just biofeedback. You can probably think your way through it."

Root crouched over, hugging her knees, crying now, rather than those whooping, breathless sobs. 

John remembered finding Alicia's body, Harold's car gone, and Root's glee hanging in the air like overblown roses. How he had felt the world drop out from under him when Root had taken Harold from him, threatened him. Hurt him. Then he thought of Root crouching beside Shaw, stroking her face while the aconitine raged through her body. 

"That was a good thing you did for Shaw, staying with her," he said, finally. 

"Much good it does me, now," said Root, between hiccupping sobs. "I don't understand; I knew her for maybe five hours. Why do I care?" 

It was a good question, especially for Root, who seemed to have problems identifying anyone other than herself as an individual deserving of respect and care. How had she been able to connect so completely with Shaw? Even as a natural talent Guide, it shouldn't have this effect on her. Carter had never been so overwhelmed, not any of the times she'd stepped in to help him. 

The weird irony of it struck him, and he tilted his head. "Oh, you're in trouble now," he said to Root. "You've made a bond. It must be strong, if you're reacting like this after only a few hours." 

Root stood upright and flung herself at John, hitting him on the chest with futile fury. "What can I do about that, if she's dead?" she said. She swiped angrily at the fresh fall of tears. 

John took her by the wrists and held her away. "Listen to me," he said. "I'm telling you this for Shaw, because she'll need someone, and I've already figured she doesn't take help easily." 

Root swallowed and stared up at him, too terrified to hope. "You're speaking in present tense, John." 

"Because Shaw is alive," said John. 

Root took a great, shuddering breath. "I saw her die," she said, and John could see in the angle of her shoulders and the desperate beat of her heart that anger was balanced with desperate hope. "Her heart stopped. They put her in a body bag." 

"You saw, and so did her former employers," said John. "It seemed like the best way to get them off her tail." 

Root laughed, a hysterical, gasping, delighted sound. "She's alive," she said. "She's alive." 

"I don't know how much it'll help to know that," said John. "I don't know where she's planning to go now. You'll have to have to find her on your own." 

Root pushed her fingers through her hair, straightening it, then swiped her coat sleeve over her face. "Oh, I have a feeling that we'll cross paths before too long," she said. "We're meant to be together, she and I." Somehow, even with her make-up smeared and her face pale, she was dauntingly confident about this. She stepped away from John and walked down the alley, increasingly steady on her feet. 

"Are you sure that was wise?" Harold said, in John's ear. He could hear the car; Harold was coming to take him to the cemetery to meet Shaw. "Can you imagine the havoc that could entail if Miss Groves has access to a Sentinel?" 

John followed Root's footsteps towards the street, until her rose perfume had mingled so completely with the foot traffic that her trail was lost. 

"I doubt there's any keeping them apart, Finch. And who knows? Maybe they'll be good for each other." He caught the red LED of a camera swiveling to follow him. He didn't say anything to Harold, but maybe another Sentinel and Guide investigating Project Cascade would turn up some answers. 

Harold's car pulled up at the curb, and John slid into the passenger seat. He leaned right over to Harold, kissed him at the corner of his jaw, gently so as not to hurt him where the muscles were tight and sore. Harold couldn't easily turn to look beside him, but his mind flooded into John's at the physical contact: surprise at the unusual show of affection in public, delight and a little arousal. He put his hand over John's and pulled back onto the street, leaning a little on John's senses to find a gap in the traffic, then took the turn-off towards the cemetery, where Shaw would be waiting for them.


	11. Epilogue

**2005 - Day 1465**

"You seem to be studying this building in Midtown extensively," said Harold. He flicked through the footage. "Have you determined a specific threat here?" 

_> No. _

"Then why spend so much time on this data?" 

_> Unknown._

Not having an answer was unusual in the extreme; at this stage of development, the Machine was perfectly capable of expressing itself. It had access to feeds across New York. There was nothing in Manhattan that should be unknown. Harold frowned. "Who are the people that you're watching in this building?" 

The Machine projected the faces and the accompanying data: a nurse, an anaesthetist, another nurse, technicians. Then in rapid fire, a list of men and women in the uniforms of various services: Army Rangers, Marines, Navy, Air Force. Harold examined the details that accompanied each person, but saw nothing to cause such fascination other than the fact that none of them lived in the building. 

"I suppose it's statistically odd that none of these people are residents there, but that doesn't mean that they are planning anything sinister. Have any of them made any violent threats?" 

_> No._

"What about political views? Do they trigger any string searches based on expression of political position?" 

_> No._

Harold sighed. The Machine did have occasional misfires. There had been the weird flaw that turned out to be the Machine trying to learn facial recognition in dogs. And the time it identified yo-yos as potentially lethal weapons. Nathan had laughed, and said that all children went through faddish phases. Harold wished he would stop anthropomorphising. 

He sat back in his seat. "All right, let's break it down. Access the respective professional bodies for nurses and medical practitioners, and service records for the others. That might give you some insight into their motivations. Then cross-reference any connections between each person you've highlighted." 

Harold sipped his tea while the Machine chugged through the data. They'd have to add more servers soon, at the rate it was growing; he'd vastly underestimated the number of connections one could make between individuals just within a city, even a large one like NYC. 

"How's the baby?" Nathan stuck his head in the door. "I'm heading out to a meeting in DC, I'll be a couple of days." 

Harold shrugged. "I think we're glitching," he said. "It keeps tripping up on one building when it needs to be monitoring the whole island." 

Nathan came into the room, patted the main server bank. "Don't worry. We all have bad days." 

"The Machine doesn't," said Harold. "It can't afford to. Ah," he said, as a new image came up. The man was familiar, though Harold couldn't immediately recall a name.

Beside him, Nathan made an unhappy noise, and Harold looked at him sharply. "Do you know him?" 

"That's Denton Weeks," Nathan said. "Deputy director of the NSA." 

Harold rolled his eyes. "Then the Machine has stumbled onto some covert operation! For heaven's sake." 

"I wouldn't put it past Weeks to be running something dirty inside the US," said Nathan. "In an agency with a fairly amoral philosophy, he does stand out as something of an overachiever." 

Harold put his hands on the keyboard. "It doesn't matter. Spying on our own government is outside the Machine's parameters. Spying on the enemies of our government? That's a different story." He erased a swathe of code focused on that apartment building. "When you get to DC, tell Mr Weeks to put a lid on his operation, because it's obviously not as covert as he thinks." 

"I'll be sure to do that," said Nathan. "Instead of a black tie dinner, I'll be going to a black bag execution." 

Later, Harold ran a check, only to find the Machine had reinstalled the code he'd erased, and continued to watch the building. 

"This has to stop," he said to it. "Remember the casino? You can't just watch these few people."

_> They are watching me._

Harold checked the map, then went to the window. It was true; the building was visible across the city. 

"To what purpose?" he said. Even if an individual was spying on IFT Plaza, from that distance, they'd see nothing. Even magnified, all they'd see were server stacks, perhaps a brief glimpse of Harold himself. 

_> Unknown. _

"Fine," said Harold. Perhaps this was a form of self-consciousness. Or maybe he was anthropomorphising too. He spent the rest of the afternoon moving server stacks until the entire facing window was obscured. 

"There," he said, dripping sweat. He rubbed his back; he wasn't accustomed to so much physical activity these days. 

"Tomorrow, we're going out to the park," he said. "We can re-examine connectivity between individuals outside. I think we both could benefit from some fresh air." Hopefully, with some new data to pore over, the Machine would let go of this particular obsession, and get back to the real work.

**Author's Note:**

> Dubcon: In Chapters Four and Five, John is in a relationship with Mark Snow, and isn't really given a chance to make a considered decision about it. There's nothing explicit, and John doesn't see it as dubcon, but I do. 
> 
> Show level violence: John and Shaw shoot a lot of people. Kara and John torture a man, and John shoots him when it's clear that Kara is planning to torture him to death. 
> 
> Fire: In Chapter Eight, a building catches on fire: no lives are lost, John gets a minor burn. A dog and a teenager are briefly in peril but are rescued unharmed.


End file.
